France 19, Belgium 1 - That's Definitely Not A Football Score!

Greetings from Jebbeke in Belgium and on what I will call another expensive campsite, especially when you are asked to pay €11 to do a washing and €50 per night and add 50c per minute to shower, and it could add a few €’s to your bill if you have a family, although what you don’t use is rebated. I will name it just in case, as there are another couple of points.

It is called Camping Klein Strand, and once again the site is quite quiet, but I don’t think I would like to be here when it is full, as it is hard to see how they can have the facilities for a full site; there doesn’t seem to be too many facilities, but there are a lot of pitches, and it is quite big. Fortunately, travelling outside of school holiday time, full sites are not something we have had to concern ourselves with, with the exception of Ypres, which I will come onto, and from a personal point of view, it’s not good. And this is the time that you need to book ahead.

Be warned, it is family friendly; there are kids everywhere, and when it is quieter like this, I don’t see why they can’t have one separate section of the site for families and one for adults only! The busier it gets, the closer the two groups would get to each other until they met, but with the size of the site, at least give us the option when you can! Being a cyclist, it is good to see the young kids out on their bikes, though I do cringe when I see a young child cycling on the tarmac in their swimwear and no helmet on, as that could be painful. Remember I was wearing a helmet back in 2013!

And unfortunately, the bane of my life is going about too. The e-scooters, but to see a child of about 5-7 years old on a big, powerful scooter flying around the site is concerning, again with no protection. Watching it was strange. Had he stopped and stepped off the scooter, I’m not sure who would have been the tallest, the scooter or the child. Either way, it can’t be right, but it was great to see the two young children teaching themselves to skateboard wearing helmets and knee pads!

But I wanted to start with a strange little Apple Maps glitch; last night was the second time it was taking us to a bar that wasn’t there! And it was Mika’s Cocktails in town. But all we could find was a soon-to-open kebab takeaway and an off-licence! I suppose the strangest thing was the bar we walked past wasn’t on the app; at least we got a nice cold beer!

There was another village that the app did the same, and for the life of us, we cannot remember where it was, but I simply put ‘bars near me’ into the search bar in the app, and we ended up at someone’s house; there was no bar!

The driving has been much the same with straight roads surrounded by arable land and lots of work to be done over the next few weeks and months, but as we have travelled north again, we are seeing military graveyard after military graveyard, and I am drawn to them, from the smallest to the biggest. Which we visited yesterday, the Tyne Cot cemetery at Passchendaele, and it is amazing; just take a look at this photo, and once again it is overwhelming!

I did have to bite my tongue though, as did the co-pilot. As we were looking at more ‘unknown soldier’ graves, a group of English schoolchildren accompanied by a war graves guide gathered behind us. Before he started his story, he asked that everyone please listen, but as he started his history lesson, about 5/6 of them continued to talk amongst themselves. I wanted to walk over and give them a speech about respect and listening to the story about the brave men who were buried a few metres away from them, some of whom travelled 12,000 miles to give their lives for a country they had no real loyalty to, other than the leader of the two nations.

These men died so they could stand there with a mobile phone in their hand, chatting and ignoring their history lesson, and they should show more respect to the land they stood on, the people who lay in the ground and the guide who was teaching them what had happened.

But of course, I couldn’t, and eventually a teacher piped up, as did the guide, one telling, one asking that everyone be quiet, which they eventually did. But how frustrating to hear it! My speech would have been polite; after all, it was children, but when I left, I wished I had said something to them! The other thing I find about some of the youngsters is their dress code when visiting these sites. Are strapless tops and the shortest of shorts really the dress code to visit remembrance sites? Because being older, I don’t think it is. Yes, summer tops and shorts are ok, but some of the sights I saw, I could quite easily have given an opinion.

But back to Ypres, I do believe there is only one campsite in or near the town, certainly only one that we could find, and we took the chance and rocked up, but they had no vacancies. But credit as they were prepared, as they had an overflow Aire a couple of miles up the road - no facilities, but all good. I do believe that could maybe get a touch crowded too, but they had a couple of single spaces, so we nabbed one of them. The larger spaces had 4 numbered places, and if there were to be 4 vehicles there, you wouldn’t have much room between them, but all good, with two exceptions.

Known to be buried in the cemetery

The first being it cost us €20 for the night; we have stayed on campsites with full facilities for less and not the best value for money. But such is life, and needs must, as they had no places at the campsite the next night either, as there was a heavy metal convention going on in town, and with no shower facilities, we don’t go without for two nights running.

Unfortunately, things were to get more expensive. On the way out I somehow managed to catch the side of the motorhome on the barrier stantion and it ripped part of a panel off the vehicle and scraped the upper one. It’s not good, and the worst thing is, I have no idea how I managed to do it!

I have exited over 40 sites since leaving home, and I haven’t had a problem, so how this happened is just beyond comprehension, but being used every day for 8 weeks has caused problems with Mary, so I can see a decent-sized bill when we get home. Thankfully we have two policies, one for the vehicle and one for internal damage, so fingers crossed!

Credit to the site owners, when I went to tell them, they told me not to worry about it!

Ouch!!

The best thing was being parked about 200m away from yet another military cemetery; this time it was the Railway Dugout War Cemetery, and yet again it was in immaculate condition, with its register in the small compartment as they all have, with every person being named.

The cemeteries all seem to be emotional for different reasons; this one has the 261 graves (courtesy Google) whose inhabitants are known to be buried somewhere in the cemetery. There are two circles of headstones as you enter the gates, and these are the stones of those men!

Our view to the cemetery

Their original graves were destroyed by fighting after they had originally been laid to rest, so when the cemetery was created, knowing they were still there somewhere, the headstones were erected for them, and it is sad to see, as they all are.

The two circles are known to be buried in this cemetery

We have booked the ferry home for next Wednesday, and hopefully tomorrow I will tell you all about the Menin Gate and Passchendaele and driving in Belgium

Thanks for reading

DJ