Dwti Draig

I’ve really got to take a moment to stop and work out where we actually are! Two days ago we left France, and drove back in to Belgium for the night. Yesterday we drove out of Belgium, into Luxembourg, across Luxembourg and then into Germany for the night. We then drove from Germany back into France, and are now staying in France for the night, but we are right on the German border. I think that’s right, anyway. One day we managed to have breakfast in Belgium, lunch in Luxembourg and dinner in Deutschland! Crazy. It makes me wonder again about these arbitrary lines in the sand; they are much easier to understand when they are a river border, such as the Rhine where we are now, but those little winding back roads we’ve driven across, how were they decided who “owned” them?

There’s not much to say really about the last couple of days; they’ve been more of a means to an end to get to our next big destination, which we’ll visit tomorrow. We did have a couple of minor excitements; not least the official handing back of our OBU in Luxembourg… no more watching the euros per kilometer rack up on our little display unit, yippee.

We also had the absolute pleasure of doing our first big hypermarket shop. Why does grocery shopping seem so much better when abroad? We always start off by promising to be very abstemious. We are very demure, very mindful, and armed with The List. The List, of course, only holds certain things, henceforth known as The Essentials. We will stick to The List, as we only need The Essentials. Obviously this starts well in the toilet roll aisle, but then suffers in increasing proportions from the fresh fruit aisle, to the cheeses aisle, and then the list is abandoned to the depths of The Handbag in a frenzy fuelled by mutterings such as “well, if he’s putting olives in then I’m having chocolate!”. Soon, we are standing sheepishly in front of the checkout, wondering how we have spent 173E on The Essentials whilst trying to hide the olives and the cassis and crumble chocolate from each other. To finish a good shopping trip we, of course, got trapped in the revolving door getting out, much to the amusement of others!

I hadn’t been too keen to travel back into Belgium, mainly because I was the one who was sitting facing the scary OBU, but Lyn managed to convince me we needed to visit Bastonge. The journey there from the French Ardennes to the Belgian Ardennes was stunning, The roads wind gently through dense forests and sleepy hamlets. We soon got to Bastogne, and pulled into the huge car park at the Bastogne War Museum. We spent about 2 hours in the huge war museum, but I have to admit it is not one of my favourites, and quite expensive to get into at 22E each. What made it all worthwhile for me though was the huge Mardasson memorial in the grounds. 

The Mardasson Memorial was erected to honour the 77,000 American soldiers wounded or killed during the Battle of the Bulge; so called as the Germans drove a “bulge” into the American lines. The memorial is shaped like a five pointed star with the names of all American states at the time inscribed, along with the U.S. units involved, including the famous 101st Airborne made forever famous in Band of Brothers. The memorial is huge, 12m high and 31 m across, offering panoramic views of the former battlefield. We wandered around at sunset and early the next morning, and it really is a special place. The peace we felt there was overwhelming, with no sounds other than birdsong. It is hard to imagine the atrocities and horrors that happened there in December 1944, when the weather was brutally cold and the surrounded Americans had no winter gear, limited food and dwindling ammo. On Dec 22 the German commander demanded surrender, to which the U.S. Brigadier, General Anthony McAuliffe famously replied “NUTS!”.  Relief came on Dec 26th when General Patton’s Third Army broke through the German lines and reached Bastogne. The Battle of the Bulge was the last major German offensive on the Western Front during WW2 and was the largest battle ever fought by the U.S. Army. 

We had a quiet night in the car park at the museum, where I made a cherry clafoutis that looked all together too sad, and then we had a final hour of peace at the memorial with our coffee the next morning and drove on, into Luxembourg to stock up on cheaper diesel and back out and into Germany, where we spent the night in a quiet aire in a little village where we watched the locals play boules and listened to the church bells peal for 10 minutes at 6pm. We left the aire, only to find a local bike race taking place and our exit out of the village blocked by a bollard and a tractor. We were again the local attraction as Lyn had to do a 3 point turn on a narrow road, and find our way out, judiciously not seeing weight limits and driving through an ancient arch that proved to be just wide enough. Phew! We are now back in France, where we passed nearby the town of Bitche. No, I did not stop there, I had no need to! We have had major thunderstorms, but at least it has cooled the temperatures a bit, down from over 30 degrees to 21 degrees which is a welcome relief/ Excited about tomorrow’s trip to somewhere I have always wanted to visit.