Lille and Calais

From London we caught the Eurostar to Lille in northern France.  We stayed just one night but enjoyed our short time there.

We found this World War I commemorative plaque in a church near our hotel. Later on we realised that these plaques are in every church all over northern France.

We had some dinner in a Belgian Beer Bar just down from this pedestrian town square in Lille. The lighting at night was really beautiful.

The next day we picked up a car and drove to Calais - very scary I know, especially when you're driving on the wrong side of the road!

Calais is a coastal city and a major ferry port. On a good day you can see the English Cliffs of Dover from Calais. This photo shows the famous sculpture by Rodin of the Burghers of Calais. The sculpture is outside the Town Hall and symbolises the six men who offered themselves to the English King in 1347 to stop him from killing the citizens of Calais.

This is a view of the city from the Bell Tower attached to the Town Hall. In the centre of the roundabout you can just make out a beautifully manicured topiary peacock, which is the symbol of Calais.

Calais is also famous for lace making and we did a really interesting tour of the lace museum. The best fun we had was superimposing our faces onto photos of models wearing lace outfits from different periods in history.

The following day we did a drive down the coast to Boulogne-sur-Mer which is about 30 kms away. It was blowing an absolute gale but here is some of what we saw.

These are two ferries we spotted just near the ferry terminal at Calais - one is arriving, the other is leaving.  We counted about six ferries in the stretch of water between Calais and Dover.

Here are the white Cliffs of Dover! I think the distance across the channel is less than 30 kms.

The area around Calais was subject to some pretty intense fighting in World War II. These craters are the result of artillery fire from across the English Channel as there were several German gun emplacements along the French coast.

We also drove through the little village of Wimereux which is a place mentioned in Grandfie Dwyer's service record. It has a small port and would have been a landing point for hospital ships. John McCrae, who wrote In Flanders Fields, is buried in the war cemetery at Wimereux.  He died in 1918 of pneumonia, while still in command of the 3rd Canadian General Hospital.

Boulogne-sur-Mer used to be a major port before being superseded by Calais, so while the city is quite big, the port is a bit of a ghost town. Boulogne-sur-Mer is also a place mentioned in Grandfie Dwyer's service record and would likely have been a destination for troop ships travelling from England. Like many towns in Northern France the city was completely destroyed during World War I and none of the buildings pre-date 1920.