Summer of War II

Bessie’s first trip to Europe was always destined to be France,  Colin and I are both confirmed Francophiles and being unsure of the roads or how the van would handle on the other side we thought Normandy was a good bet.

Apple Orchard

Once the destination was decided my expectations were simple.   Sample again the delights of France and see the Bayeux Tapestry.  Picardy would be a bonus, but I am ashamed at my poor French geography.  I had no idea Bayeux was close to the D Day landing beaches and that Bayeux was the first city of the Battle of Normandy to be liberated. 

Road to Rouen

 The ferry sailed from Portsmouth to Le Harve, and on the way south we stopped off in Jumièges, a little town in an almost peninsula on the Boucles de la Seine (The Buckles), where the Seine makes its final snake and wind before emptying into the Channel.

We booked into the excellent Camping de la Base Loisirs for two nights. We loved cycling round the quiet roads, through apple and plum orchards and watching the little ferries (bacs) cross back and forth on the Seine as part of the road network so we stayed another night.

The town of Jumièges boasts a cathedral with links to William the Conqueror, and although it is a ruin it attracts some interest, but the buckles are a detour so the town was quiet.  One evening we ate in a small bar on the cycle back to the camp site.  The owner was a cheery lady with few teeth and a walk with a hobble. She spoke no English but corrected our bad French with zeal. She impressed on us the delights of pomme de terre à la maison and what she brought us to accompany the steak was the best chips I've tasted since my mum threw out her chip pan.

Bayeux

But Calvados beckoned and after a short stay in a very busy, Brit filled site at Le Brévedent, where the kids seemed to be competing in 'who is the loudest brat competition', we headed for Bayeux. 

The Municipal site on the edge of town was spacious and the pretty town was only a river path cycle ride away.  The weather had been hot and sunny so far but the wind picked up and ominous clouds gathered so it was no hardship to head for the museum and the Tapestry.

River Cycle

The Bayeux Tapestry is actually an embroidery, thought to be commissioned around  the year 1070 and is over seventy metres in length. It depicts the history of William the Conqueror's claim to the English throne culminating at the battle of Hastings.  The regimented visit snaked along a queue rope with the rest of the tourists after being handed an audio just before entry to a darkly lighted room that held the tapestry.  This audio is supposed to aid your progress, describing each panel as it came into view, but the plumby English commentator races through the story and only tells the half of it. On each panel there is the main action but along the bottom sub plots emerge, some are quite pornographic in nature, this is ignored and after only ten minutes we were back where we started feeling slightly cheated. It is possible to go back before leaving the gloom but I was blinking in daylight before I knew it and it was then too late.

Caen Graffiti

The next day it poured so we took the train to Caen. Although known for being the City of William the Conqueror it also featured heavily in the Battle of Normandy and huge parts of it were destroyed during that time. The Château de Caen is well worth a visit, with ruined battlements for clambering over and liberal pieces of artwork to view. There is a fine memorial there for the soldiers lost in the liberation.

Caen Liberation Memorial

Back in Bayeux I was determined not to leave before paying my respects to the three thousand plus service men and women buried and remembered in the British Commonwealth War Cemetery. It was moving and I felt a real sense of gratitude to them. I feel the French do too. The liberating allies were celebrated everywhere in the region. 

Bayeux British War Cemetery

We left Bayeux in a squall and headed for the landing beaches, Omaha beach was a blur of high waves and flapping flag poles – we didn't stop. The weather had improved when we reached Pointe du Hoc the highest point between Omaha beach and Utah beach, where US Army Rangers climbed the cliffs and captured the position. And by the time we reached Utah Beach the sun was out. Although busy with tourists the beach was quiet.   Someone had laid a cellophane wrapped bunch of yellow roses randomly on the beach -a touching gesture and yet for me this wasn't a sentimental journey.  With the exception of my uncle who was lost in Italy, I have no connection to WWII. Maybe it was the John Wayne effect.

Looking out from battlements, Pointe Du Hoc

We travelled north from there to the little commune of StVaast de la Hougue.  Famed for its oysters and its twin Vauban forts this was a must destination. For some reason I love Vauban forts. I suspect it is their location round the fringes of France that attracts me rather than their architecture although that is pretty impressive too.

Tatihou, island fortress

Vauban is France’s most famous military architect.  He designed and built forts during the reign of Louis XIV making Frances borders more secure.   The twin forts at St Vaast were for keeping the English at bay.

La Hougue, land fortress

I first encountered Vauban in 2012 when visiting the fortification of Mont Dauphine and then again in 2013 when on a trip to The Alps we spent some time in Briançon where there is a fantastic example of his forts. None of this Vauban bagging was intended it just happened. So I now wonder which fort I will stumble upon next year.

I started the holiday with one war based novel and finished it with another – Dr Zhivago.  This epic begins in WWI and ends with the Russia Revolution.  Again not an intentional choice but a bargain book that subliminally made it into my hand.  In the windswept sunshine of Normandy reading of the cold harsh weather in Siberia somehow did not feel strange.

Summer of War (1)

It wasn’t meant to turn out this way, it just happened. 

It started with the Rebecca West novel I picked up from a bargain bin on impulse. The Return of the Soldier, written in 1918 is an astonishing novella about love, war, sacrifice and decency.  Read the Goodreads review here.  I took it to London to read during our week at Crystal Palace.   It must have been a subliminal buy because I had always planned to visit the newly refurbished Imperial War Museum and in particular the WW1 exhibition.

Normally I would avoid any glorification of war but as part of the commemoration to the start of WW1 I submitted my granddad’s 1918 diary to the BBC online resource.  The diary was the inspiration for my poem Scream In Dolce.

The museum is in Southwark in what used to be Bethlem Royal Hospital also known as Bedlam Asylum and was on the No3 bus route from Crystal Palace. Perfect.

I was worried the IWM would be all bluster about our great warriors, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. The museum pulled no punches in its demonstrations of the futility of war.

Witnesses of War

The impressive Witnesses of War exhibits take over the atrium (including the aerial space). These include among others the Nery Gun, A Press Landrover involved in action in Palestine, a Russian tank and a rusting heap of a Bagdad car-bombed vehicle. All these exhibits were accompanied by display footage of their own particular story. I found the story of the V1 and V2 bombs particularly interesting and it set the tone for the rest of the visit. Slaves were used in the making of these bombs, a fact know by the inventor Wernher von Braun.  There were more people killed in the making of the bombs than in the actual bombings. Von Braun went on to work for NASA on rocket development and was awarded The National Medal of Science in the US in 1975, a fact the IWM is clearly disgusted with.

Other exhibits show twisted pieces of the Twin Tower, anti-Iraq War posters and a striking model called Beach Girl, showing the charred carbon remains of an atomic bomb victim. It is intended to shock and it works.

The WW11 section runs footage of the Normandy beach landings with commentary from the men who were there as well as the whole story of the war.

The main event is the WW1 exhibition. It is free but time ticketed for crowd control.   This section caters for everyone. As well as old fashioned factual information and artefacts, phone interactive games for the young’uns, there are stylistic installations where you can sit and absorb the enormity of what is going on.  One striking video rolls out the slow disintegration of a field in Picardy, from pleasant poppy field to craters and eventually into a sea of mud.

The last video is the most powerful. As the visitor leaves behind the destruction of WW1 there is a story of what happened next – after the war.  Aid to Germany, how borders changed and countries reorganised themselves to build their futures. It ends with the final frame - the words.

‘The War to End all Wars’

Poppies in the IWM gardens

 It was like a punch in the stomach and brought tears to my eyes.

Well done to all involved in this wonderful museum.

Cool Camping and Cycling

I am going to start this blog with the book review. A couple of weeks ago I read The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd, a wilderness and travel book about the Cairngorm Mountain range.

The beauty of this book, apart from the wonderful language used by Shepherd, is the fact that the book was written in 1944, not published until 1977 and yet it is still relevant today. As a keen walker Shepherd tramped these hills and absorbed their essence. I have been in the Cairngorms many times but after reading The Living Mountain I yearned to go back, I felt I had not given them the attention they deserved. So with this in mind we set off up the A9 one Friday night heading for Rothiemurchus.



 One of the optional extra we had fitted to Bessie was a bike rack and up until now it had never been tested. The Cairngorms are perfect for biking so what’s stopping us.

 Rothiemurchus campsite is just two miles outside Aviemore. I phone ahead and booked a pitch and was glad I did because we got the last one and they were turning vans away at the gate. The site is set in the old Caledonian pine forest with pitches located in nooks and crannies giving the impression of exclusivity to the woods. The park felt secure with kids cycling their bikes round the one way system and a burn gurgling over a small rise just by our pitch. The toilets and showers, accessed by key fob, were in pristine condition. In the morning as we ate breakfast al fresco, the site owner offered us another, better pitch; he had an early leaver, but we were settled and decided to stay put. We set off mid-morning, cycling the track from the campsite. Not far from the site the track splits. The left fork leads to Lairig Ghru and the right through Glen Einich to Loch Einich. We chose the path to the right.

my abandoned bike

 Colin had downloaded a geocaching app to his phone to try and we had fun finding a cache before we even got beyond shouting distance from the camp site (more about geocaching in later posts).

The track through the forest was well made. I felt exhilarated as I always do when amongst the ancient Scots pine, and a little sad at the thought that once this land was covered in this forest and now there are only a few patches scattered over the Highlands. As we left the trees behind the track grew rougher and my sightseeing was over as I wobbled, skitted and watched for every bump, stone, rubble and root to avoid. I’m a rubbish cyclist and helmetless so we ditched the bikes and walked at a relaxed pace. My wimp-out decision was vindicated when round the next bend we witnessed a young girl fly off her bike onto the rubble, she was OK but her bloody knees and arms needed attending to.

One of the river crossings

 The track led into a basin where bulking hill rose out of the loch at the base. At a river crossing we met three cyclists with skis strapped to their backs. They pointed to the west face of Braeriach, to three small tongues of snow on an otherwise bare hillside. ‘Tom, Dick and Harry,’ one skier explained. ‘Great spring snow, you’ll see our track on Harry and the jump I made.’ He was so happy he didn’t seem to mind his bike skidding and adding a paddle to his day’s activities.


At the loch side as we ate our picnic of dragon’s eggs and homemade Flapjack I tried to imagine Nan enjoying the same scene, the same tranquillity all those years ago. There was no pollution here, no wind turbines and no ski tows. Earlier we detected a geocache somewhere in the area, but had no telephone reception to find it! Yellow algae swilled at the shore side, flowers sprouted through the pebbles. My latest addition to the van was a Collins Flower Book, I took photos and later identified the species back at the van as, Dog violet, Lady’s Mantel and Colt’s Foot.  It was hard to believe that just over the mountain was the ski centre.

The walk back revealed the full expanse of the Rothiemurchus forest and I was happy to know I would be safe under its canopy for another night.


The soundtrack for this trip was the movie soundtrack for O Brother Where Art Thou. I could lie and say I chose this because it is the story of three men's bid for freedom and the Cairngorms is the place where I feel free. But the truth is I pick the CD up for £3 from the supermarket when I stocked up for the trip. And what a find it is. As well as the famous theme I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow, there are old folk classic like Big Rock Candy Mountain and You Are My Sunshine with crystal clear performances from among others Gillian Welch, Alison Krauss, Emmylou and The Fairfield Four.
It might not have much to do with Rothiemurchus but its foot tapping rollocks will always remind me of this trip.

Loch Einich

Sleeping in the heart of a volcano

A volcano?  It sounds bizarre but that is exactly what we did.  The fact the volcano erupted fifty five millions years ago doesn't detract from the glamour.

This all took place last weekend when we drove Bessie to Ardnamurchan in the West Highlands of Scotland. Although Ardnamurchan is a peninsula, the five minute Corran Ferry crossing saves an hour drive and gives the trip a real 'getting away from it all' feel. We have made this crossing many times but this was the first with a van and we only just squeezed in behind a huge lumber truck.   The peninsula is ribboned with mostly single track roads but we reckoned if the truck can do it so can we.

Corran Ferry - Bessie's first ferry crossing

Our first night was spent at Far View Campsite in Kilchoan, a motor-home specific site that had all we needed for a stopover. The owners keep an impressive garden and sell honey and herbs. It is situated in walking distance from the pier where a regular Mull ferry and trips to Staffa leave daily, so it would be an ideal base to leave the van and take a day trip to the islands.

The Ardnamurchan Lighthouse is reported to be the most westerly point on the British mainland, but Corrachadh Mòr, a wee tip of land a kilometre south of the lighthouse, should hold this title. Never the less a visit to this Stevenson lighthouse is a must.  The climb up the stairs of the thirty six metre tower is not too hard and rewarded with amazing views to the islands on gfood days.

From there we drove through the Ring of Ardnamurchan (the volcano crater!) to the small crofting community of Sanna.  There large sandy beach is littered with lava rocks and an abundance of cockles. The now rare sound of a skylark heralded our walk. Along with other walkers on the beach I craned my neck to spot and there it was, a speck, way up in the sky, warning us off with its distinctive chirup.

Sanna is an idyllic spot on this remote west coast, but life has been a struggle for the crofters there.  The excellent lyrical memoir Night Falls on Ardnamurchan by poet, Alistair Maclean laments the decline of Sanna's crofting community and is worth reading if planning a trip to the area. Because if the precious nature of the crofting land here we were forbidden to park the van overnight, so we headed back into the crater.

Wild Salmon and squeaky cheese kebabs

 We found a perfect flat piece of land just off the small road, put a couple of blocks under two wheels and set about preparing our first Bessie barbie.   Upon leaving Kilchoan I popped into the well-stocked village store and bought a couple of pieces of wild salmon to go with squeaky cheese and veggie kebabs. Colin had our spanking new Blue Mountain folding BBQ smoking in no time and then stumbled on a wee pile of wood, just perfect for a camp fire.  

Smoking in the crater

As the sun set behind the western ridge of the ring and a golden hue burnished the van, it felt as if we really were inside a volcano.  

The night was empty of animal and bird sounds.  Only the disturbance of a car passing on the road about four am broke the impression of total isolation.

The next day broke warm and sunny.  We donned our running shoes and ran a trail over a hill track, past a ruined hamlet of Glendrian until we reached the trail end in a remote pebble cove northeast of Sanna.  The first and last parts of the trail were good drove roads but a bog trot in the middle soaked our feet. I guess this route was once used by the crofter of Glendrian to take cattle and sheep to boats, but sadly this pastime has long ago fallen into history.

Maybe the dry sunny weather contributed to the enjoyment of this trip, but I suspect in all weathers Ardnamurchan will remain a special place.

The sound track for our trip was unintentionally in keeping with the remote, mountain and island theme.  The recently acquired Fred Morrison CD Outlands is a blend of whistle, Highland, Uilleann and Reel pipes accompanied by banjo, mandolin and bodhran to create a rollicking blend of Scots Trad with an Appalachian feel.  Yea hah.  

 Eigg and  Muck with Rhum in the background