Friday morning we checked out of our lovely hotel room and headed for the Wellington Quarry, which was a 15 minute walk from the train station. There's a lot of incredible history in this underground tunnel system, which is 20 metres deep into the ground. These elaborate chalk tunnels (also known as quarries) held over 20,000 soldiers for the surprise attack in the Battle of Arras in WWI. These quarries were originally dug in the Middle Ages and were linked up by New Zealand tunnellers for the battle. The tunnel system was extremely well done and very impressive. We took the tour and learned about the soldiers (primarily from Britain and New Zealand) and there experiences in these dark tunnels. Side note: I was briefly interviewed for some sort of television thing that was getting footage of the Quarry. So my best guess was I would be in some news feature in a random French TV station.
After the visit, we walked around the town and I indulged in some retail therapy. We picked a cafe for lunch in the Place des Heros and relaxed for a few hours. Our train left at 4 pm and we went on about 3 different trains, stopped in Belgium at one point (to our surprise) and finally arrived in Amsterdam. K&M
Tunnel in Wellington Quarry
Lunch @ the place.... nom nom nom
Place des Heros
Sounds like an interesting spot, how did you hear about it?
ReplyDeleteWe found out when we got there actually - there is A LOT of WWI monuments & sites to see. Pretty cool.
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