Ieper

This morning we didn’t get up until 8:30am. I was laying in bed just watching the clock and suddenly I realised I hadn’t changed the clocks and it wasn’t really 7:30 it was 8:30.
Ofcourse it didn’t really matter, we weren’t in any particular hurry and were still debating whether or not to even go to our first destination as we hadn’t found ticket prices.
Just after 10am we left our parking spot and headed for the town of Leper. This was our first real border crossing of this trip and had we not known we were going to Belgium we would never have known as there was no signs to say welcome. Infact we only knew because the signs changed language from just French and English to French, English and Flemish, which I think is the European equivalent of welsh.
Our first visit of the day was the Sanctuary Wood Museum and the original trenches of the British military in World War One. The museum was full of artefacts found in the trenches including guns,knifes, bayonets, buttons and various tools. Grenades, mortar shells and various items of clothing had also been retrieved. All of these items were displayed in glass cabinets around all of the walls. In the Center of the museum were two large tables with 12 chairs around each table and at every chair, on the table was a big wooden box with what looked like the viewfinder for binoculars on the outside.
Both Ellie and I sat on separate chairs and we looked through the viewfinder.
The pictures we saw were from 1914-1919, all in black and white or sepia, and they started off quite mild, showing family life, Farming, people getting married and just general life. The pictures in each box progressively got worse as the war started and finally ended up showing the trenches, dead bodies strewn everywhere, soldiers that had horrific injuries and even dead animals.
Neither of us particularly enjoyed the boxes, but we do appreciate the cost of the war and the sacrifices made.
From the museum we headed outside to the trenches. They were amazing to see and the fact that we could walk through the trenches and original tunnels with no lights in the pitch black really gave us a sense of the horror that took place here. Whoever was here in that time period must have been terrified.
We left Sanctuary wood museum both feeling a little depressed and decided that even though we had the flanders fields museum on the list we would skip it. We had seen enough death and destruction for this trip.
Our next stop of the day was Ypres, and almost all the way there we passed war graves of British and Canadian soldiers. Once you pass one of these cemetery’s you start to realise how many people were sacrificed. Once you pass 20 that cost of life is really unfathomable.
We arrived in Ypres just after midday and found a great parking spot right in the edge of the city. We walked in and headed straight for the cloth hall. This is the home of the In Flanders Field museum but we had already decided we weren’t going to pay for entry as we didn’t need to read or see any more about the war, but the building itself is amazing and so was Ypres.
Most of the shops were closed for lunch between 12 & 2pm except for the cafes which were bustling with people. We noticed lots of independent shops selling clothes, Food, or housewares. The town itself is a mixture of modern and old architecture with the focal point being on the main town square where the cafes and churches have been rebuilt to there original design pre war. Ypres was all but totally destroyed in the war and every single night at 8pm the last post is played. There are also bronze keys placed on the floor outside civilian homes that were killed in the war. It really is a remarkable city and we enjoyed it.Read more