Somme – Day 15

Today was the last day of the Battlefields tour and I took the above shot from the reception area of the hotel in Peronne while waiting for Colin to arrive.

Our first port of call was to be the Australian Corp memorial at Le Hamel.

Looking to village of Le Hamel from where the Australian advanced.

Looking to the left of the village of Le Hamel.

Again looking left from Le Hamel. The wood to the left in the distance was the German lines, while the wood to the right was the Australian lines.

They basically completely rebuilt this park since I was last here in 2001. It is still a rather sparse memorial but as you can see the weather was extremely sunny and clear (if some what cold) but that provided fantastic views of the battlefield.

Next stop was the Australian National Memorial just outside of Villers Bretennoux.

Plaque on wall as you enter memorial, showing major battles and divisional memorials.

Luckily I was able to go to the top of memorial which is something that I haven never had the chance to do. You may also see that they are replacing the trees in the Commonwealth cemetery in front of the memorial. The existing tree have a large root system that is disturbing the graves as well as dropping too many leaves.

Our final stop was the Australian museum on top of the school in the town of Villers Bretennoux.

These are the plaques that stand outside the school walls.

The museum is on the top floor.

After then returning to Amiens station I jumped aboard and early train to make my way back to Paris.

After arriving at Gard du Nord in Paris I had to make my way via the Metro to Gard du Lyon where my train to Geneva would be leaving.

At Gare Du Lyon I had to wait for over 3 hours until my train was ready to depart. When the train finally appeared on the departure board it still didn’t have a platform number. The actual departing platform didn’t appear until about 20 minutes before departure which meant a bit of a scramble to the train.

Once onboard and having located my seat I settled in for the trip to Geneva.

Although I arrived late (>9.45pm) I was able to check into my hotel without any issues. Luckily it as only a few hundred metres from the station. That certainly makes life easier.