Holiday Snaps
 

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Ieper (Ypres) town square and Cloth Hall. The Cloth Hall is now a WW1 Museum and well worth a visit. Some very thought provoking and moving exhibits.

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Anyone that thinks war is a really good idea, please come here. Tyne Cot is the largest British Military Cemetary in the world with approximatley 12,000 graves. The majority of the graves (over 8000) the identity of the the soldier buried there is unknown. This is the case with all of the cemetaries aroud Ypres, of which there are many.

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Menin Gate Ieper. There are nearly 60,000 names.

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Unexploded shell we found in a freshly ploughed field just outside Ieper.
THey are still finding about 200 tonnes of unexploded WW1 munitions around Ieper every year. The farmers leave anything they find at the side of the road (thats what we did with this one) for the bomb squad who come round on a regular basis to pick them up. This is a war that ended 90 years ago.


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Sherman Tank. Bastogne Town Square.

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We should have taken a guided battlefield tour around Bastogne in this. Unfortunately the poor old girl was having some carburation problems in the hot weather and only made it as far as the Bastogne Mueseum. Instead we had to do the tour ourselves, see below.

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A spot of green laning looking for foxholes outside Bastogne.

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More off roading looking for foxholes.

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Foxholes (at last !) outside Bastogne (Probably 506 PIR, 101st Airbourne)

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Classic road racing at Chimay. Some of the riders where coming right to the inside of the cycle path on the apex (first picture). On the same corner the sidecar passangers heads where about 4" away from the barrier.

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Yours truly in stylish raceday attire :oops:

nice pics...

looks great

went to Ypres a while ago-

its liek chocolate box innit... ...hard to think of all the gore n deaththat was there...... it was lovely just with a coke and watching the world go by in the square.

Went many years ago, the cemeteries are everywhere, massive ones like your photograph to tiny ones with a handful of graves. They are all immaculate, the respect for the fallen is very evident.

nice holiday snaps! :thumbsup:

Great selection of photos! Brought back happy memories of many trips to that area.

Did you stand in the Menin Gate to hear The Last Post? *Gulp* As I remember, the 60,000 names on it are solely of those British and Commonwealth soldiers with no known grave.....

Never seen the Chimay races (but drunk a lot of their Trappiste!!).

Cool photo's they are. :thumbsup:

Last post at the Menin gate does bring a lump to your throat.
I was pleased to see quite a few school parties in Ieper, good that they teach about WW1 in schools, hopefully one day we'll finally learn somthing from it and stop blowing the **** out of each other.

I remember a trip we went on when in the Army. We went for a visit to Dachau concentration camp. All the way there we were full of cheer and having a laugh. On the return trip no one said a word.

Over 200,000 people were killed in that camp and over 300,000 deaths.