Back to France

We packed up and said our farewells to Angela and Oliver until next year and drove off towards France.

We stopped at a German Lidl to make sure we got some German goodies like marzipan in chocolate, preprepared gluwein, bretzels and cheese with caraway seeds. We saw lots of different liver and sausage creations - and bought some bratwurst sausages. The trees are all changing colour so we got this unusual photo.

The scenery was lovely in the bright sunshine.

We later stopped for a van lunch on the edge of a quiet road looking across the green fields.

Soon we crossed the border - there was no stoppage going into France- but there was a police check in the opposite direction going into Germany. We saw we were getting into WW1 territory by the signs showing graveyards and memorials.

We then got going to the Verdun Memorial Museum to find out about the huge Battle of Verdun in WW1. We arrived in the carpark and we were surrounded by mounds and holes everywhere caused by the bombs.

We had an hour and a bit to go through the museum before it closed.

We found out that the battle of Verdun between the Germans and the allies went for 302 days, the longest of the war, and the positions of the 2 sides didn’t change much over that time. Hi

It was a muddy hell that was a nightmare to be in, with bodies and rats in the trenches.

French casualties amounted to about 400,000, German ones to about 350,000. Some 300,000 were killed.

There was a display of the vehicles used. The men in the trenches made many remarkable things from the materials available to them.

The sun was going down as we left the battlefield area. We will be back tomorrow.

We parked up in the free aire in the middle of Verdun, a little noisy from traffic and trucks parked next to us, but handy for 3 supermarkets and the town centre.

We saw a large V of cranes fly over us.

We went to bed early after a reheated dinner as we were tired after our big weekend, and then travelling.