For history buffs, the walled town of Ieper (Ypres to the English) is the at centre of the historic battlefields in Flanders where so many young men from many countries were killed. Our hotel, Old Tom, was right on the town square and central to all the action, especially the chocolate shops.
The Menen Gate in Ieper has a special significance with its recognition of the dead lying in unmarked graves. Along with several hundred people, we attended the daily memorial ceremony at 8.00pm - the playing of the Last Post and Reveille all the more haunting because of the acoustics of the building. We laid poppies in memory of Thomas Hugh Bourne Smith, Ross’s great uncle whose name we found on one of the panels.
During the afternoon we had also tried to find a cemetery near the town of Menen where some of Birgit’s distant German relatives may lie, having also been killed in WW1.
Dinner at Old Tom saw the group pass on the local specialty of eel, but according to Ross and Birg, the moules were to die for. From an earlier diner, we picked up the local technique for eating mussels, which involved using an empty shell like pincers to remove the meat. Very cool! The boys had several glasses of the local brew, Stella Artois, just to see if they liked it. Nez and Doreen didn’t find any chocolates that they didn’t like.
The areas we drove through were all green, low lying and intensively farmed. Bruce was able to give us some good lessons on crop rotation and sillage while Nez got lots of creative ideas for the use of window boxes and planter pots. Drive past the Wilson’s around Christmas and you’ll see a European touch to their gardens.
