French Drivers & Roads
They are much calmer than the Italians: They drive slower and follow road rules. The fast lane (as in the autobahn and autostrada) still exists but speeds are lower. Vehicles in this lane always seem to return to the slower middle lane. French drivers are less impatient and more polite.
The French road system is as extensive and expensive as the Italians. Almost all secondary roads are double-lane divided highways. Access to the roads is thus limited as large cloverleaf systems are required at intersections.
Tertiary roads are still major roads, are not double-lane divided, and have huge numbers of traffic circles, basically at every intersection. This makes for very slow travel.
Tolls are common on major highways and are very expensive – about 1-2€ per 10kms of road. This can add up.
Driving on secondary roads to save money is often not very practical unless you have a lot of time and don’t mind endless traffic circles slowing you down. They pass through every little town with significant speed limits, traffic lights, and local traffic.
In towns, speed bumps are everywhere and get quite frustrating. Speedbumps have been overdone in France.
Showers. Most large service centers on major highways had showers in the convenience stores. They were generally very modern, and clean and cost 2€.
These were my last few days in France and continental Europe for 3 months.
AMIENS (pop 137,000). This former capital of Picardy is where Jules Verne lived for 34 years. The mostly pedestrianized city center was tastefully rebuilt after WWII with green spaces along the Somme River. It is a university town with 28,000 students.
Cathédrale Notre Dame. A Unesco site, this is the largest cathedral in France at 145m long. Begun in 1220 to house the skull of St John the Baptist (framed in gold and jewels, it is in the Treasury, closed when I was there), its soaring Gothic arches are 42.3m high over the transept. Plaques and flags honour American, Australian, British, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and Canadian soldiers who perished in WWI. It is possible to climb the 137 steps to the north tower.
I admired the wonderful polychrome frescoes of St John the Baptist, St Fermin, and St Jaques (James, Santiago depending on language), which were protected by sandbags and shrapnel barriers in WWII. The highlight for locals is the 17th-century statue of the Crying Angel over the over-the-top Baroque high altar.
Nightly, from mid-June to September, and over Christmas, a 45-minute light show bathes the cathedral’s façade with medieval colours.
BATTLE OF THE SOMME, FLANDERS & ARTOIS MEMORIALS
The Battle of the Somme is a symbol of the meaningless slaughter of WWI, and the killing fields where almost 750,000 soldiers from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, the West Indies, and Canada (the British Empire), died along the Western Front. They were buried where they fell in more than 1000 military cemeteries and 2000 civilian cemeteries that dot the landscape along with Flanders Fields – running roughly from Amiens north via Arras and Bethune to Armentières and Ypres in Belgium. French and German war dead were buried in large cemeteries after the war. 61% of American dead were repatriated or reburied in large cemeteries where they fell (39%).
The focal point of each Commonwealth cemetery is the Cross of Sacrifice. Many of the Portland limestone headstones have moving personal inscriptions composed by family members. Most have a bronze Cemetery Register to record impressions and biographical details on each of the identified dead.
Nov 11, 2018 will be the centenary. Convenient bases for exploring the area include Amiens, Arras and the small towns of Péronne, Albert and Pozières.
Vimy Ridge Canadian National Historic Site. 11 km north of Arras, this preserves the crater-pocked battlefield exactly the way it looked when the guns fell silent (despite the French attempts to erase all evidence). Of the more than 66,000 Canadians who died in WWI, 3598 lost their lives in April 1917 taking Vimy Ridge. This is the site of the memorial, the heavily fortified highest point controlled by the Germans. 20 allegorical figures carved from huge blocks of Canadian limestone have the names of the 11,285 Canadians who died in France but have no known graves. Reconstructed trenches and tunnels in the surrounding forest and countless shell craters wind through the entire site declared a graveyard because human remains still lie buried.
A mountain across the lake from the townsite in Waterton Lakes National Park is called Mt Vimy. I’ve climbed it twice including the long ridge heading SE to Crypt Lake.
Read The Long Road, an excellent historical fiction about two Canadian Indian soldiers and their involvement in the war.
Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial. 9kms north of Albert also preserves part of the Western Front as it was at the fighting’s end. On July 1, 1916, the volunteer Royal Newfoundland Regiment stormed entrenched German positions and was nearly wiped out – strategic and tactical miscalculations led to a great slaughter. A bronze caribous statue is surrounded by plants native to Newfoundland (which didn’t join Canada until 1949).
My Volkswagen California camper van was finally delivered to me at a McDonald’s (where else would you meet – it is the busiest restaurant in Italy and France, the one constant in every city and town) south of Lille. It has been sitting in the dealer’s lot in Leipzig since mid-December with a holdback imposed by emission issues. I have driven a loaner California since February 1st and have put on over 10,500kms driving it to and around Sicily, up the east coast of Italy, and then through south France and up the Atlantic coast. It gave me a chance to break in my driving skills with a manual before getting my own vehicle.
IN FLANDERS FIELDS by John McCrae, May 1915
In Flanders fields, the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Inspiration for In Flanders Fields: During the early days of the Second Battle of Ypres a young Canadian artillery officer, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, was killed on 2nd May 1915 in the gun positions near Ypres. An exploding German artillery shell landed near him. He was serving in the same Canadian artillery unit as a friend of his, the Canadian military doctor and artillery commander Major John McCrae.
As the brigade doctor, John McCrae was asked to conduct the burial service for Alexis because the chaplain had been called away somewhere else on duty that evening. It is believed that later that evening, after the burial, John began the draft for his now-famous poem “In Flanders Fields”.
LENS. This town has the Louvre-Lens, since 2012 a showcase for hundreds of treasures from the venerable Musée du Louvre. The centrepiece is a semi-permanent collection of 200 true masterpieces from the dawn of civilization to the mid-1800s. This is a much easier place to master than the big museum. Free.
BOULOGNE TO CALAIS
This is the most spectacular section of the Cóte d’Opale. 40kms long it is the mirror image of the White Cliffs of Dover. Visit via the D940 road that winds between lovely villages close to the coast or walk the GR120 trail hugging the cliffs and marked with red and white blazes. Farms with rolling fields edge up to the cliffs.
Via Lens and Arras (the Somme), I drove to Boulogne-Sur-Mer, a gritty city on the coast (has a walled upper town and an aquarium). I stopped at a crazy store with scads of people exiting with shopping carts full of stuff. Most of the shelves were empty but what was left were at bargain-basement prices and I even spent 2.75€ on a tray, salt and pepper grinder, and a grater.
Start at Dune du la Slack and the town of Wimpereux with a lovely esplanade fronting the deep, shallow beach. Trails leave immediately to the north along the cliffs and through the wind-sculptured dunes covered with marram grass, privet, and rose bushes.
Stop at Musée 39-45 which has life-size tableaux of WWII military and civilian life. The dashing but wildly impractical French officers’ dress uniforms of 1931 hint at possible reasons that France fared so badly on the battlefield in 1940.
Cap Gris-Nez. Topped by a lighthouse and radar station, it overlooks the busiest shipping lane in the world with 500 ships per day. The 45m high cliffs are only 28 km from the white cliffs of the English coast. It is a stopping-off point for millions and migratory birds and a crucial line of defense through the ages. The area was the site of the fort when the English controlled the area in the 1540s. And during WWII as part of the 6000km German Atlantic defence line that stretched from Spain to Norway. German pillboxes, cannon posts, and bomb craters are still part of the landscape. The area had 24 cannon sites that traded shells with the British across the English Channel. In the Allied assault over the summer of 1944, a massive bomber sortie preceded the Canadian infantry finally capturing the area on September 29, 1944.
Cap Blanc Nez. Southwest of Calais, just past Sangatte, the coastal dunes give way to cliffs that culminate in windswept, 134m-high Cap Blanc Nez with breathtaking views over the Bay of Wissant, the port of Calais, the Flemish countryside, and the distant chalk cliffs of Kent. A grey stone obelisk honors the WWI Dover Patrol and paths lead through WWII Allied bomb craters and the bases for German radar posts. The obelisk was built in 1922, blew up in WWII, and rebuilt in 1962.
The radar scanned the English channel and helped site the one-ton shells fired from the Lindeman Battery, 3 massive 160-ton guns with 20m, 406mm barrels. They could reach Kent 40kms away. The batteries, down on the beach below Cap Blanc Nez are now buried under the slurry produced from building the Chunnel.
On a lovely cool day with minimal wind, I drove the route before taking the Chunnel to England. This was my 89th day in the Schengen Visa Zone and time to leave. You are only allowed 90 days every six months in the zone. With three more entries to Schengen necessary in my two years in Europe, it seemed prudent to follow the rules.
And I was keen to be in an English-speaking country after 3 months of Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French – even if you can’t understand the accent. I am not looking forward to the English – in my 12 years of travel, they are one of my least favourite people – I find many of them snobs, the British Empire, and all that stuff. I had had enough of Brits on my 5 months last year in Africa.
I was also ready for an adventure as I had never been to the British Isles before, the home of my maternal grandmother, Nancy Devonshire Strande (she immigrated to Canada in 1912), and Canada’s queen. The United Kingdom will be country 94. But I am not keen on driving a right-hand drive, manual shift vehicle on the left side of the road. I am thankful for the 4 weeks of practice in Namibia and South Africa last April/May. The most exciting event will be Anna joining me for a month to explore England and Scotland in my new camper van.
I saw Dunkirk as the only town in France on my return from the British Isles on June 27.
Dunkirk (Dunkerque, “church of the dunes in Flemish). This city was almost destroyed by the Germans in WW II and then rebuilt in an uninspiring way. It has little charm, but there is a family-friendly beach. But the name will be forever immortalized because of the dramatic rescue of thousands of British soldiers from its beaches in 1941. This was my last destination in France until the summer of 2019.
On June 30th, 2018, from Ypres via Comines, I made a short detour back into French Flanders to see Lille, which I had missed on my trip through Flanders in March.
LILLE (pop 232,000)
This may be France’s most underrated major city. Once a grimy industrial metropolis, its economy was transformed into a cultural and commercial hub. Thanks to Eurostar and TVG, it is an easy weekend destination from London or Brussels.
Maison Natale de Charles de Gaulle. He was born here in 1890 (d. 1970), founded the French Resistance in 1940 with a strong connection to French Flanders, and was the first president of the Vth Republic of France. The house is an upper-class house with his dainty baptismal robe and some evocative newsreels. He is famous in Canada for his statement “Vive Quebec Libre”, not well received by most of Canada. €5 (not worth it)
Citadelle de Lille. This is still an active military installation, the Boufflers, commemorated in a statue of a battle in 1708. I walked most of the way around the pentagonal fort on a running track beside a stream. The fort is elevated on a plateau above the surrounding park on top of a 10m brick wall. I couldn’t find the entrance that was not part of the military operation. It is possible to see the inside on a one-hour tour (in French) by signing up with a passport in the tourist office 7 days before.
Palais des Beaux Arts. This is a collection of 15th to 20th-century paintings including some by Rubens, Monet, and Van Dyck, porcelain, classical archaeology, medieval statuary, and scale models of the fortified cities of northern France.
Musée de l’Hospice Comtesse. In a remarkably attractive 15th and 17th-century poorhouse, it features ceramics, earthenware ceramic tiles, religious art, paintings and furniture, and an exhibit on the history of Lille.
LaM – Musée d’Art Moderne, d’Art Contemporain et d’Art Brut. 9 km east of Lille in a lovely park setting in Villeneuve-d’Ascq, it has a sculpture park and many contemporary art masters. Normally €10, it was free as it was the first Sunday of the month
La Piscine Musée d’Art et d’Industrie. 12kms NE of Lille in Bouhaix, part is housed in the Art Nouveau Municipal Bathhouse (1927-32). It was under renovation but there were several exhibits in the shopping center next door. Normally it showcases fine arts (paintings, sculptures, drawings) and applied arts (furniture, textiles, and fashion).
It was then a relatively short drive of 40kms into West Wallonia to Tournai.