Zita and Daddy go to Vimy (Tuesday)

While it wasn't really in our travel plans, I felt that if we were going all the way to France that at least some of us should try to make it to the Canadian memorial at Vimy Ridge. It was a long day with a lot of quiet reflection, which was more or less what I expected, so I think it turned out for the better that Duncan and Clara spent a down day in Paris with mommy.

Zita and I got up fairly early to make the 8am TGV to Arras, the nearest town to Vimy served by the main rail line. From Arras we took a taxi directly to the memorial which was only about 20 minutes away by car.

There is a new visitor information centre that just opened this year in April. There's a picture below looking through the trees. All the humps and dips in the ground are shell craters from the war. I asked about the trees in the area. They are largely replanted scotch pines which were there originally. They also mixed in some maple trees because Canada.

The visitor centre is very well done with a mix of permanent and temporary exhibits. It is largely staffed by Canadian university students who live in Arras for the duration of their stay(Zita thinks it would be a good job for a fully bilingual student such as herself to apply for in the future). One of the students (Julia) gave us a tour of a section of the tunnels that originally connected the Allied reserve lines to the front lines. She also took us through a portion of the preserved trenches on site. She said shortly after the war it was decided that some of the trenches should be preserved so the sandbag walls were replaced with similar bags filled with concrete. The bags have long since rotted away but the remaining concrete works to very good effect.

This is a link to the pdf of the brochure that has the self-guided tour and map. It talks about the centre and memorial in greater detail.

Closest point between the German and Allied lines. You can see a concrete
machine gun box on the German side just to the right of centre. Frighteningly close.

The German machine gun box.

There were little patches of wildflowers everywhere. Coupled with the silence
and sense of peacefulness, they were an interesting juxtaposition to what
went on here in the past.

In the tunnels. We didn't go that way.

This branch went down another 50 feet or so below
the main tunnel we were in, Julia said it might have
been a listening post and/or a place where explosives
had been set in case the tunnel system was breached
and they needed to collapse it.

Following the information centre and the tour of the tunnels Zita and I walked along the road to the monument itself. It sits right on top of the ridge at the highest point. The approaches are wide open so you can see it from a long way off. It's very powerful and moving. We wandered around, sat, wandered some more. We went around to the far side and down in the field in front and sat and ate our lunches. I'm not sure there's much more I can say about it. I think you have to experience it.

On the way back to the visitor centre we stopped to visit the two cemeteries. So many without names...

After catching a cab back from Vimy to Arras we found we still had a few hours before our train to Paris. We wandered around town and took in a few sights.

Town square in Arras.

We arrived back in Paris early in the evening. It was a long day but we were both glad we were able to go.