Albert to Chatillon sur Seine

 It was a perfect morning for a ride with the temp in the late teens and early 20’s. The Tomtom guided us through the back roads and small villages and the roads were decent.

The first thing on the agenda was to visit the Lochnagar crater, but first, in a case of mistaken identity we stumbled across another crater site called the Glory Hole. Not many tourists visit here but it is very interesting. A woman who lived in an adjacent house opened the gate for us and we wandered though a paddock to see two very big craters. The allies dug a tunnel under the German positions and planted explosives to blow them up, the Germans heard them and dug some tunnels of their own. The Germans blew theirs up first and the explosion detonated the allied munitions resulting in a lot of dead soldiers and two bloody big craters. 

There have been modern archaeological digs on the site and the lady showed us pictures from this and also from the actual war footage. 

We then moved up the road to the Lochmagar site which is a permanent memorial of what happened and to those who died.

It is said to be biggest explosion of WW1 and it is one big hole. 

This was created by allied forces tunnelling under the German positions and destroying the front line. As a result of this the allies moved forward and the Germans were forced to retreat.

The carnage is simply unimaginable. 

We then meandered through the lovely rolling countryside and passed many war grave cemeteries. 

Unfortunately the road conditions became progressively worse which slowed us down.

 It was still really lovely riding but it got to 1 o’clock and with the temp now 30 and climbing we realised we hadn’t gone very far. 

We made the decision to jump on the motorway for a while. 

Zooming along at 130-140 we thought we were making good progress until we looked across at one point and a high speed train passed us like we were going backwards. Formidable. 

We left the motorway for the remaining 50km or so but between Tomtom and my weariness we took a couple of detours which wasn’t really welcome. One of the detours took us through a town which was home to at least a dozen Champagne companies and their wine making premises, so that was cool to see. 

Finally we made it to our accommodation for the night which is a large suite in a very old building. I’m not sure how old but the one just down the road dates back to the 16th century.

We took a wander around the town and sat down to dinner at about 8 o’clock which is about right in France.

A really good day today but we will modify our distance expectations if we want to continue to experience the little villages and back roads .  This is not Australia.