Germany 2025 - The Battle of the Somme and then Home

 Monday 13th October - Bray sur Somme

The last day of our holiday and also of our WWI tour.  Let me start by giving you a short history lesson.

The Battle of the Somme took place between 1st July and 18th November 1916 on both sides of the River Somme. The battle was intended to hasten a victory for the Allies.  More than three million men fought in the battle, of whom more than one million were either wounded or killed, making it one of the deadliest battles in human history.  The British Empire suffered approximately 420,000 casualties, the French suffered 200,000, and German losses were at least 450,000 killed and wounded.  British troops included some from British Empire countries - Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, India and the West Indies.  The front stretched about 25 miles, the British sector was roughly 13.7 miles long, while the French attacked along a 6.2 mile front to the south.

We drove to Delville Wood which is the South African National Memorial, only to find it closed on a Monday which I was rather surprised about.  Shame as it looked attractive.  There is a sign which says that the Wood is the resting place of thousands of British and German soldiers who died bravely.

Next it was the Thiepval Memorial, which is the British Memorial to the Missing of the Somme.  It bears the names of more than 72,000 officers and men of the United Kingdom and South African forces who died and have no known grave. Over 90% of those commemorated died between July and November 1916. The memorial also serves as an Anglo-French Battle Memorial in recognition of the joint nature of the 1916 offensive and a small cemetery containing equal numbers of Commonwealth and French graves lies at the foot of the memorial.  The Memorial commemorates more missing soldiers than any other Commonwealth Graves Commission memorial in the world.  There is also a museum but we didn’t go in.  

The Ulster Tower was our next destination.  It is Northern Ireland's National War Memorial. It was one of the first memorials to be erected on the Western Front and commemorates the men of the 36th (Ulster) Division and all those from Ulster who served in the First World War.  Sadly this is closed on Mondays too.

We weren’t too sure what the Newfoundland Memorial Park at Beaumont-Hamel would be like as it appeared to be more organised than others. We were met at the gate by a Canadian student who told us what we could see and did we want a guided tour.  We said no, but then wondered afterwards if we should have done as we had questions.  

The Germans didn’t know when the Allies were going to attack though they knew a major offensive was imminent due to the massive artillery bombardment. The attack was delayed by bad weather, which prevented the Allies from launching on the originally planned date, so the specific timing remained a surprise to the defenders.  

The 1st Newfoundland regiment, based at Beaumont-Hamel, attacked at about 9.15am on July 1st 1916 but unfortunately the assault lacked the element of surprise and in less than half an hour the Regiment suffered the second highest casualty rate for a battalion on that day. More than 700 were killed, wounded or missing.  This tragedy touched almost every Newfoundland family.    

The Newfoundland Memorial Park has preserved trenches and craters.  The trenches didn’t look that deep but time has eroded the sides and filled up the bottoms.  Reinforced with sandbags, the walls of the original trenches were about 2.5 metres tall.  I stood and tried to imagine the scene back in 1916 with gun fire, shouting and screaming, but I couldn’t.  Maybe it was just as well.  There is a small visitor centre which was interesting.  As we left we found our Canadian student and I asked him why there are so many small cemeteries around the area.  He said that the French wanted their soldiers buried in one place, which is why there are such huge French cemeteries.  The British wanted their soldiers buried where they fell, hence the number of small cemeteries, and the Germans were told where they could bury their dead.  I wonder if he was right. 

Our last stop was to the Lochnager Crater which was created by a large mine detonated beneath a German field fortification known as Schwabenhihe, by the British Army's 179th Tunnelling Company Royal Engineers, on July 1st 1916, at the start of the Battle of the Somme.  The mine was a massive explosion that created a crater approximately 330 feet wide and 70 feet deep. The explosive charge consisted of two main chambers, one with 16.5 kgs and the other with 11 kgs of ammonal explosive.  The resulting crater had a lip around 15 feet high, created by the force of the blast, which helped protect advancing troops.  The British named the mine after Lochnagar Street, the trench from which the gallery was driven.

Back at our site, it was empty, not a motorhome in sight!  Had the word got round about the awful Gifford-Hulls? 🤣  Three more motorhomes turned up later on though, phew!

37 miles

Tuesday 14th October - Hayling Island

Awake at 7.30am, breakfast at 8.00am and away at 9am. Richard was worried about catching the Shuttle!

Our first stop was to find a Post Office to post back the Austrian Go Box. According to Google there are two Post Offices in Bray sur Somme but one is now a nursery and the other has moved, we found a sub post office in a library.  Anyway the GoBox is now going back to Austria - I hope!

Google made a real blunder today. We were going along a narrow lane with grass growing down the middle (maybe that was a sign), when suddenly we came to a T junction. The road we should have turned onto was unmade and looked very rough, so we turned around and found a different way!

Once we were on the motorway, it was plain sailing until we got close to Calais when the mist came down and the drizzle started. Last time we went on the Shuttle back in May it was just the same. We checked Rio in and then checked ourselves in. We were booked on the 14.16 but managed to get on the 12.46. 

I think this is my favourite photo of the trip

When we arrived at the Eurotunnel I worked out that we had done 898 miles since saying goodbye to the group in Rothenburg. Once we were on the Shuttle we discovered that Lizzie, one of the group, was 4 vehicles behind us 🤣 How weird is that??

The Shuttle was 16 minutes late in leaving.  The trip passed quickly as Lizzie came down and we chatted until it was time to get ready to disembark. 

This is my second favourite photo

I don’t remember much of the journey home as I slept almost all the way!  All was good at home and the unpacking was done in record time.

23 days and 7 countries.  For me only Luxembourg was a new one, but for Richard it was four new countries.  I’ve been to Austria twice now but both times to the same place! I would like to see more of Austria (but that does mean another Go Box!) and also go back to Luxembourg and do the city properly and see a bit of the country itself.  Switzerland is definitely on the wish list to return to.  

Louise took this photo - I don’t often get photos of myself!

2026 sees us taking the ferry to Santander at the beginning of March and spending about four weeks in Portugal.  The rest of our 47 days will be in Spain and France.  We are only home for a few weeks before we go to Ireland to join another Wandering Bird group.  I’m sure we will do something else in the Autumn!

So until March 2026 have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year!

238 miles

Total 2427 miles

Germany 2025 - Back into France and The Battle of Verdun

 Friday 10th - Charny-sur-Meuse, Verdun

Last night’s site really was good for €5. We didn’t use the electricity in the end, we are quite happy being self sufficient. 

Back into France today. I have loved Germany and look forward to returning one day. There have been such changes in the landscape, but the mountains have been my favourites. Richard has been disappointed with the roads, he feels that the French ones are better. We have had 12 days in Germany plus the three days when we dipped into Switzerland and Austria. 

Our drive was relatively easy.  We went through a series of tunnels, a couple of them were about 1 km long.  There was lots of mist over the trees which looked a little eerie.

It was strange that the German roads were really busy with lorries, but once in France they seemed to disappear - where did they all go.  We noticed that suddenly, just before the French border, all roads lead to Paris, it was the same on the way down!

We passed Forbach which is where we started our journey into Germany 15 days ago.

The colours have really changed while we’ve been away. All along the roadsides the trees are green, yellow, orange and red. Beautiful.  The photos were taken in Germany - as we got into France the colours weren’t so vibrant. 

Our destination was a small town north of Verdun, but we needed some shopping first and I found one of my favourite supermarkets, Carrefour, in Verdun.  I do like French supermarkets, especially Carrefour, but this one wasn’t as big as some I have been in, but I managed to get some English tea!

We found our stopover right by the River Meuse in Charny-sur-Meuse.  It is quite large and says it will take 50 motorhomes.  We found a hard standing but they were few and far between so any one else would have to be on the grass which was quite long and wet.  

Our visit to this area was to visit some of the WWI sites.  The Battle of Verdun was the longest battle in modern history which took place from 21st February 1916 to 15th December 1916 - a total of 303 days.  The French suffered 377,231 casualties and the Germans 337,000, a total of 714,231 souls. 

In the evening Richard and I were planning on what to visit in the area. This made me think about my Great Uncle (my mother’s Uncle), John George Mason. He was registered at birth with that name but his army records show him as George. He is shown as missing on October 30th 1914. I hadn’t done any research since just before Covid, and there is a bit more out there now. I found that his name is on the Menin Gate.  

162 miles

Saturday 11th October - Charny-sur-Meuse

The first day of our two day WWI tour.  Today it was Verdun and on Monday it was the Somme.  But the day started with a trip to the vet for Rio to have his worming pill and fit to travel check.  He passed with flying colours though he felt a bit rough later in the day after the worming pill.  The vet asked me if I spoke French and I said a little so he said he would speak English - excellent English at that!

In 1914, Verdun was a major military stronghold, standing opposite the town of Metz which had been German since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Verdun had a double ring of 28 forts and was protected by 60,000 men and 670 guns. At the end of August, German troops got to within 20 kilometres of the town.

During the Battle of the At the end of September, the town was attacked from the south and west. The German army had Verdun in its grip and it isolated the town by cutting many of its lines of communication.  The 300 day Battle of Verdun commenced.

Our first stop was the Memorial de Verdun, a very moving museum, built on the battlefield and which remembers both French and German soldiers as well as civilians who lost their lives.  We were both interested to learn just how many soldiers were active in the area (1 million) and, even more, the amount of countries that were involved in WWI - over 30.  The front round Verdun kept moving backwards and forwards and the small village of Fleury, which is next to the museum, changed hands 16 times.  In one place we walked on the mud floor of a trench (it was solid and very difficult to walk on!) with a field kitchen on it.  Exhibits included a soldier’s life, weaponry, vehicles as well as modern day interactive and multimedia displays. There was even a recreated trench system.  It was very dark in the museum so the photos are rather dark too.

Next we went to Fort Douaumont, which was the heart of the battle of Verdun.  It had been built after the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 to defend France.  It was the largest and highest fort on the ring of 19 forts which protected Verdun.  We got the feeling from the audio guide that the Fort was occupied by the French during most of the battle before the Germans took it over, but the internet says differently in that 98 German soldiers took it over on February 25th 1916, 4 days after the start of the battle by entering through an open window.  The French felt that Douaumont would be ineffective against German firepower and they had been partly disarmed and left virtually undefended - there were 56 troops and a few gunners.

Douaumont was finally recaptured by three infantry divisions of the Second Army, during the First Offensive Battle of Verdun on 24th October 1916. This event brought closure to the battle in 1916.

We were way underground and our audio guide gave a very good description of nearly each room. The soldiers did not go outside and, apparently, the smell was pretty awful.  The fort was built to house a garrison of 635 soldiers.  On May 8th 1916, a store of grenades exploded killing about 850 soldiers.  Some bodies were buried outside but 679 were walled up in two casemates inside the fort.  There is a shrine in front of one of the casemates.

The main gun in the fort was a 155mm and was able to be raised to fire and then lowered back down  to be protected by the fort’s roof.  The turret the gun was attached to weighed 70 tonnes and was operated by hand cranked winches.

Next was the Douaumont Ossuary which is a memorial containing the remains of both French and German soldiers who died on the Verdun battlefield.  There is no photography inside the building but everyone was.  You access the building by a spiral staircase and enter the Cloister, which is 450 feet long and home to 46 cenotaphs in 18 alcoves which contain the remains of at least 130,000 unidentified soldiers of both nations which were found in various areas of the battlefield.  Through small outside windows, you can see the skeletal remains which are filling up alcoves at the lower edge of the building.  I had read about the skeletons but it was still such a shock when I looked in the first window!  Outside there are 16,142 graves for identified French soldiers. This is the largest single French military cemetery of the First World War.  The foundation stone was laid in 1920 and the corpses were transferred in 1927 with an official opening in 1932.

Our last stop was to the deserted village of Fleury. The 422 residents were given a few hours to leave the village and it was razed to the ground within hours.  It changed hands 16 times during the war.  After the war it could not be rebuilt due to contaminated shells, explosives and poisonous gas.  Today there are markers to show who lived in each house - the baker, wine grower, plumber, weaver, tin smith are just some of the trades who lived there.

Back at the camp site our pitch was empty (well we had left our reserved sign out!) and next to us was a Danish motorhome. These two pitches were demarcated by a strip of grass in between. Later a French campervan reversed in between the two motorhomes - he was literally 2 feet away from the Danes and 6 feet between us  - we had his sliding door on our side!  There was so much space on the site on the grass but he obviously wanted a hard standing.  Not acceptable in my eyes. 

29 miles

Sunday 12th October - Bray-sur-Somme

We left Charny-sur-Meuse to go to Bray-sur-Somme, 2 big rivers!  But first we wanted to visit the Butte de Vauquois, (a butte being an isolated hill with steep sides and a flat top.)  

We arrived at a deserted car park and not really knowing where we were going.  We saw some steps and climbed them, deviating off to the side for a rest!  There we found entrances into the hillside, which all shut off.  We wandered around then went up to the top of the hill where we found barbed wire wrapped round chevaux de frise, still there from WWI.  On the other side of the hill were huge craters.

The hill was a crucial high-ground position with a commanding view making it a strategic stronghold for both.  The Germans held the hill at the end of September 1914, while French troops failed to gain ground. This was reversed in 1915 when the Germans finally reached the summit. However, the troops paid a heavy price in terms of human losses. Faced with this new status quo, a landmine war broke out a few months later. 

Both armies dug extensive networks of tunnels to undermine the enemy positions, leading to a continuous subterranean battle.   The tunnels totalled about 10.5 miles.  The German side had 7.5 miles and the French side was 3 miles.  The constant subterranean explosions obliterated the village of Vauquois, which was located on the hill.

The French and German tunnelling units fired 519 separate mines making a landscape full of craters.  Some of the German mines used up to 60 tons of explosives. There were a huge number of casualties, with estimates suggesting around 14,000 soldiers died on this small section of the front. Some estimates place the number of missing soldiers at 8,000.

The land mine battle finally ended September 26th 1918, when the doughboys of the 138th and 139th US Infantry Regt, 35th US Division, captured the hill on the first day of the American Meuse-Argonne offensive.

From Vauquois we drove to Bray.  We were driving along the A4 when we started seeing huge balls on the verge.  We assumed they were modern art, especially when pyramids and totem-like poles joined in too!  I looked them up and discovered that the balls are large, polychrome cylindrical sculptures by artist Guy de Rougemont. The public art installation consists of a series of these large sculptures placed along the shoulders of a 30 km section of the A4 autoroute, particularly in the area near Reims.  It made some interest along a rather boring stretch of road.

From the busy main roads to the quieter roads where we found fields filled with short sunflowers mixed in with blue flax, the colours were lovely. 

We found our site, another Camping-Car Park, right beside the River Somme.  It is a small site of 10 pitches, all side by side, marked out by poles - no squeezing in by a campervan tonight!  We overlooked the river with a lovely boat moored up in front of us.  We took Rio for a walk and found behind us a series of lakes with lots of fishermen.  Rio loved it just as he had loved running around at the Butte this morning.

175 miles

Germany 2025 - Twins, Towers and as Extraordinary Church

Tuesday 7th October - Schongau

A quiet night bearing in mind we backed on to the railway. We left Nordlingen and headed for Landsberg am Lech. 

We found a car park but couldn’t find any motorhome spaces although there should have been 8, but we found another car park and parked next to Kiwi’s twin 😃  

Landsberg was built on the River Lech and at the entrance to the town was a man made weir which was very pretty.   The old town has some pretty buildings and a few have art painted on them.  Sadly it appears that there was a lot more of the town, including some town walls, which we didn’t see.  It is a busy town with lots of cars driving through, but the old square is traffic free. 

There is an unusual half tower called The Jungfernsprung dating back to the 14th century.  In the 19th century, it was significantly raised to accommodate a water pressure tank. There is a legend dating back to the Thirty Years' War, when women are said to have jumped from the tower to their deaths to escape the invading Swedish soldiers. 

The town is noted for its prison where Adolf Hitler was incarcerated in 1924. During this incarceration Hitler wrote/dictated his book Mein Kampf together with Rudolf Hess. His cell, number 7, became part of the Nazi cult and many followers came to visit it during the German Nazi-period. Landsberg am Lech was also known as the town of the Hitler Youth.

In the outskirts of this town existed a concentration camp complex, Kaufering, where over 30,000 victims were imprisoned under inhuman conditions, resulting in the death of around 14,500 of them.  Kaufering was a system of eleven subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp located around the town of Landsberg am Lech in Bavaria, which operated between June 18, 1944, and April 27, 1945. 

     Our next, and last, town was Schongau, where we found our Aire by the River Lech.  The footpath up to the town was all uphill with lots of steps. Some of the steps had a stream running beside them.  We staggered up to the top and through a lovely gate in the town walls.   

The town was attractive though busy, cars were parked everywhere.  We did manage to find an ice cream parlour though.

Coming down the steps was a lot easier 😃 though Richard’s knee was playing him up. Rio and I went across the road to look at the river, the bank was quite steep and he decided to have the zoomies - I was worried he would zoom into the water!

Rio has managed to embarrass us three times in the last few days. Twice, when Richard and I were studying a map, a German lady had to point out that Rio had done a poo!  Today he saw a boy, about 12, with a guitar on his back and he freaked out!  He barked at the poor boy who looked terrified!

93 miles  Wednesday 8th October - Fussen

A quiet night until 6am when a lorry woke me up 😕. I’d just got back to sleep when school children started gathering for their school bus at 7am!!  

I tried a new supermarket today, REWE.  It was a nice shop with a huge beer section!

We were off to the Pilgrimage Church of Wies.  I thought it was a small building so was very surprised when I saw just how big it was.  The church is an oval Rococo building, built in the late 1740s. Because of its outstanding Rococo architecture it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  When I went in there was a man giving a speech of some sort in German.  As he finished everyone clapped - I wondered what he was talking about!  Next thing the organ started up, it was wonderful looking round the amazing building with the organ booming out.  The ceiling was something else, it was very hard to take photos without falling over!  The pulpit was really ornate, but right in the middle of the church is a wooden statue of Christ and it’s that the church was built for.  It is said that in 1738 a miracle happened when tears were seen on the statue which was in the middle of a field.  A wooden chapel was built in the fields but there were so many pilgrims to the small building that it was decided to build a splendid sanctuary for the statue. 

The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary. The choir was consecrated in 1749, and the remainder of the church finished by 1754. 

The next stop was to look at the outside of Neuchwanstein Castle.  We couldn’t go in as dogs aren’t allowed.  We had hoped to go to a bridge and a waterfall where you can get a good view of the castle but we couldn’t take the motorhome down the road, so we turned around and drove back the way we had come, stopping so that I could take some photos.

King Ludwig II of Bavaria felt the need to escape from the constraints he saw himself exposed to in Munich, and commissioned Neuschwanstein Castle on the remote northern edges of the Alps as a retreat.  Ludwig chose to pay for the palace out of his personal fortune and by means of extensive borrowing rather than Bavarian public funds. Construction began in 1869 but was never completed. The castle was intended to serve as a private residence for the king but he died in 1886, and it was opened to the public shortly after his death. Since then, more than 61 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle.  In April 1945, the SS considered blowing up the palace to prevent the building and the artwork it contained from falling to the enemy. The plan was not realised by the SS-Gruppenführer who had been assigned the task, and at the end of the war the palace was surrendered undamaged to representatives of the Allied forces. The Allied occupation authorities eventually returned the palace to the reconstituted Bavarian state government.

We then found our campsite, which was huge with lots of touring caravans made into bungalows!  Some looked really tatty but most were lovely but very cramped up together.  The site is situated on the edge of a lake, Bannwaldsee, and our pitch was very close to it.  We sat for a while on a bench just looking over the lake until Rio got bored!  We walked alongside for as far as we could and then returned to Kiwi for a glass of wine in the early evening sun.  Later there was an amazing sunset.

47 miles Thursday 9th October - Offenbach an der Queich

It was a driving day, mostly boring motorway’s. We started off in the rain but it cleared up later.  The traffic was heavy too.

We stopped for some lunch and set off again. A huge lorry kept pulling up beside us and hooting. It was a bit intimidating until Richard checked the step and it hadn’t retracted.  We had to stop at the next ‘P’ and sort it out. The WD40 will be out when we stop!

Google suddenly took us off the motorway and right through the middle of Pforzheim, which wasn’t very funny, but we weren’t alone!  When we finally got back on the motorway there wasn’t a car going our way and there was a horrendous queue going the other way. Richard felt better when he realised that it wasn’t Google doing its thing of diverting us unnecessarily!

We crossed the Rhine, it was very wide and had a very fast flow on it.

We went round the city of Ulm which is on the Danube.  The city has an amazing Gothic Protestant church famed for having the tallest church tower in the world at 539 feet.  Construction began in 1377 and the building was completed in 1890, financed and built primarily by the citizens of Ulm as a symbol of civic pride.   During World War II, a devastating air raid, on December 17th 1944, destroyed most of Ulm's historic center, but Ulm Minster miraculously sustained only minor damage, standing as a symbol of endurance amidst widespread destruction. While two bombs fell on the church in late 1944 and March 1945, they did not detonate. The Minster's survival is attributed to luck or possibly its use as a landmark by Allied aircraft.  

Our stop over was at Offenbach an der Queich. (Offenbach at the Queich), the Queich being a river that is a tributary of the Rhine.  We were beside a park which Rio really appreciated.  It was €5 for 24 hours and we had electricity which was charged at 50 cents per kilowatt.

Today’s photos are mainly of Mountain views which I love.

205 miles