Menin Gate at midday

After leaving Scotland, we stayed in England just long enough to spend time in Surrey with E and meet some of the wonderful friends she has made during her gap year. On the way south we made an overnight stop in Harrogate (and a visit to the Royal Baths) and a quick visit to pretty Oxford.  Too quickly the time came to farewell E until our sunny Christmas reunion, and we departed via the white cliffs of Dover for Dunkirk.  We were on our way to Paris again, and wanted to visit Ieper (Ypres) in Belguim.

Pretty Oxford

Happy times in Surrey's lovliest pub, the Hare and Hounds,
with two of Surrey's loveliest residents.

Ypres

I was 11 years old the first time I saw Menin Gate.  I was standing next to my World War I veteran grandfather looking at one of the Australian War Memorial's best-known paintings, Menin Gate at Midnight.  My grandfather had been at Ypres and fought in the Battle of the Somme and I remember that he had to explain to me the field of steel-helmeted ghosts - fallen soldiers - around the imposing Menin Gate Memorial depicted in the painting.  Since that day, I've stood in the War Memorial's darkened gallery many times and Menin Gate at Midnight always has a deeply moving effect.  In Ypres today The Menin Gate Memorial had the same effect.

At the end of WWI Winston Churchill wanted to claim the entire ruins of the town of Ypres as a war memorial.   185,000 British Commonwealth soldiers had died in the surrounding area - the Salient - and 100,000 of those had no known grave. Winston said that there was no place more sacred in the world.  Understandably the people of Ypres didn't agree with Winston's plan for their town and so in 1928 the memorial was built, and at precisely 8pm every night since (WWII excepted), in a ceremony to honour and remember the lives lost, the Last Post is played by buglers from the Ieper volunteer fire brigade.

The Menin Gate Memorial

Inscribed on stone panels on the walls, under the great arches
 and up the stairs are the names of some 55,000 soldiers with
no known grave.  More than 6,000 names are Australian.

Ieper's Cloth Hall which also houses the
In Flanders Field Museum

We visited the In Flanders Field Museum where the harrowing story of the Ypres Salient is told.  The excellent multi-media curating added even more meaning when we visited the Memorial just a short walk from the museum.  Ieper is a very pretty town and senor and I were pleased to be able to visit it on this lovely autumn day.