Day 175: In Flanders Fields

Time for some non-UNESCO exploration today! After another delicious home-cooked breakfast from our hosts, we walked over to the rental car office about 15 minutes away where we picked up our car, and headed off into the countryside. The car is great - a VW Golf "Supervan" which basically means it's slightly longer and slightly taller than the regular Golf. A little bit more room inside, but it's got some great feature upgrades too over the Golf I used to have in Sydney. This one has a full built-in navigation system which means Shandos can relax rather than give directions, and it's got auto-parking as well so I can just let it park itself! Good stuff.

Off we went into the south-west countryside, heading towards the town of Ypres (EYE-Per) and the World War I battlefields area. Although most of the trenches in WWI were in France, the most northern sections went through Belgium, and many many people died in this area.

We decided to do our own self-guided tour of the area, starting at Tyne Cot cemetery, which is the largest Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in the world. I think there were around 12,000 headstones here, though about 80% of them were unidentified, and then another 35,000 names running around the walls of soldiers KIA or MIA whose remains were never found/identified. It's built on a small hill that was the site of vicious fighting at several points, and three German bunkers are still on the site. Also interested to find that it's called Tyne Cot because the houses in the area reminded the British soldiers of cottages near Newcastle-upon-Tyne!

Next stop was the Buttes New British Cemetery, not as big but with a nice obelisk standing on a hill. Again this was the site of heavy fighting, the hill itself was a rifle range before the war and was basically the only terrain feature worth noting for miles around, so it became strategically important.

We also visited the nearby Duitse Begraafplaats Langemark (German Students Cemetery), which was mostly German soldiers. These had mostly been buried in a mass grave as they were unidentifiable, and it's the Student's cemetery because the brigades that fought and died here were mostly student volunteers.

Also nearby was a Canadian cemetery and memorial, marking the spot where poison gas was used for the first time in warfare (22 April 1915). Lots of people died, and though WWI is in many ways synonymous with the use of gas, it was actually surprisingly ineffective as a weapon and accounted for relatively few casualties.

Quick pitstop at a rural supermarket for some takeaway lunch before heading to the John McRae memorial. He's the man who wrote the famous In Flanders Fields poem while fighting in the area, and the bunkers where he was working as a surgeon at the time are still preserved. Interesting to look at!

After this we drove into the town of Ypres to visit the In Flanders Fields museum, which was excellent. We also paid a little extra for our tickets as the belfry attached to the museum building (originally a market hall) was part of the UNESCO listing for Belgian belfries. So of course we had a look! The museum was great; very modern and very detailed with lots of stuff to look at and absorb. Unfortunately we had to hurry through the last parts of the museum as our parking was running out!

Back outside, we topped up the parking meter and checked out Menin Gate, a huge memorial archway at the entrance to the city. Around it is the name of every service man and woman who perished in the area during WWI - so it's pretty big as you'd expect! Decided not to wait around for 8pm when they play the Last Post, but instead grabbed a quick drink at a local cafe.

Back to Bruges where we managed to find a decent parking spot and headed into town for dinner. Went to another one of the tourist restaurants on the main square, but this one didn't have quite as good food, sadly. Off to bed ahead of another move tomorrow!Read more