Wellington Quarry & training to Amsterdam

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

Arras & Vimmy

We left early Thursday morning for the small little town of Arras, which is situated north of France. It took less than an hour on the TGV (which is the high speed train in France) to arrive and we went in search for the tourism office. We decided to stay at a one star hotel (student budget here) called "Le Passe Temps" - it was literally a small room, bed and tiny bathroom. For the price we paid it was perfect. We first explored the small town and found their two main squares lively at lunch time. La Grande Place was the larger town square, which had mostly parking, businesses and restaurant cafes. Place des Heros was more interesting with city hall, bars, restaurants, boutiques and shops - there was much less parking making it more enjoyable. Not very far we found the main cathedral and also this huge museum of fine arts which was unfortunately closed.
For €35 we got a ride to Vimmy and back, which was about 30 minutes from Arras. We first went to the memorial which was this enormous monument up on the famous ridge. It was truly breath taking and we had the place to ourselves! The monument stands on a bed of 11,000 tonnes of concrete that's reinforced by hundreds of tonnes of steel. There are incredible sculptured figures that contain almost 6,000 tonnes of limestone. Carved along the walls are the names of 11,285 Canadian soldiers who were killed in France during WWI. Over 66,000 canadian service personnel died in WWI. There is a lot of symbolism attached to this memorial, including representations of peace, justice, sacrifice, truth and knowledge. After the monument, we paid our respects at the common wealth cemetery and Canadian burial. We then took a tour of the underground subway/tunnels, which is where a lot of the strategy and planning took place, and walked along the trenches.
That night we went out for dinner and got one of my favorite french meals "moules frites" which means mussels and fries. They were absolutely INCREDIBLE, by far the best version I've tasted in a very long time. We ate at the Place des Heros in town and spent the evening enjoying the scenery, music and atmosphere.

K&M

Church in Arras

Vimmy Ridge Monument

Soldier names along the walls of the monument

Such an impressive monument

The monument is actually HUGE

The view from the monument of the ridge

Jon & the monument :)

Nice view of the ridge with my new friends

Canadian Burial

Common Wealth Cemetery

One of the many tombstones

Tunnels of Vimmy

Some of the furniture abandoned after the war

In the trenches

Incredible view of the line of fire