ARRAS-DUNKERQUE. 20th-21st August.

I was finally able to get into the blog via the web address (the one that mere mortals use) which I wasn't able to before, and realised that several days of Paris were missing. They still existed as two drafts, but were not in the blog (because Dumbo forgot to sign out), but I managed to rectify that a few days later. Thank you Michele and Sue for your encouraging comments. Thanks also to 'Anonymous' of Fleetwood Crescent, South Frankston - I might have known that my first negative comment would come from you.

Anyway, there I was, south of Arras, shelterless, in the middle of a foreign land. It was a lovely summer evening, with about 3 hours of daylight left, so I thought 'bugger it, I'll camp in the bush' and started hoofing it out of town. After about a kilometre of this along the Baupaume road, I thought 'hang about- you want to head north (into Belgium), and at present you're walking south(back in the direction of Paris)', so I turned around, went back through Arras, and got onto the motorway north, going to Lille. My main objective was to find somewhere to get my head down, so I kept walking, occasionally extending a digit in a vain attempt to get a lift. This is on a six lane motorway, somewhat analogous to trying to hitch on the Monash.

The evening finally starts drawing in, and I follow a track away from the motorway, as it's obvious the traffic will be roaring past 24/7. I walk for about half an hour through fields of crops etc, and no soon do I get out of sight of the last farmhouse than another appears, or a barn where some sort of agricultural production is closing down for the night. Finally I'm in open country, and spy what I'm looking for - a nice wood on the brow of the next hill. Approaching it in the gathering dusk, I find that the 'wood' is in fact enclosed by a low stone wall, and is in fact a cemetery for German soldiers killed in the surrounding area in the First World War. It's on a slope, with 'steps' cut back into the slope about 80 metres deep by say 150 metres wide, with hundreds of simple graves on each slope, sheltered by trees planted amongst the graves and on both sides of the cemetery. I climb up about five of these steps, and find a nice wooded area at the back. The whole place has such a deep feeling of peace and tranquility about it that I immediately begin to feel sleepy. Conscious however, that sleeping here could be construed as desecrating hallowed ground, I do a recce to make sure I don't have any immediate neighbours, apart from the couple of thousand sleepers nearby. What I do find is that there is a railway line deep in a cutting at the back of my bedroom, but it looks very quiet and disused.

I'm not equipped for camping on this trip, but carry a tent fly for emergencies, and have a mossie net (for the India part of the trip). It didn't look like rain, so I didn't make any attempt to erect the fly into the semblance of a tent, but lay down with the fly completely over me, and the mossie net as a hip pad, and nodded off. It was lucky that I knew about the railway line, or I might have died of fright, because about 10 o'clock there was this almighty roar, sounding like the clappers of Hades, and what must have been an enormously long goods train whooshed through the cutting. This pattern was repeated several times up until about midnight, but with much shorter and quieter trains, and I quite got used to the company.

Then I slept till the first morning train at about 5 am, and was quietly dosing when Darren from the ANZ Bank E-Fraud section, rang me with the the glad tidings that the bank is going to reimburse me the $6000 that was embezzled out of my account. Every time I've rung the ANZ Bank, I've told whoever I'm speaking to that I'm in France (8 hours behind Melb), and every time they go on as if I'm in Australia. So once Darren has got his head round the time difference bit and apologised profusely for waking me early, I say 'Mate, you're not even going to get close to guessing where I am right now' (I couldn't really believe it myself).

(Just after I left Sister Michele was kind enough to download and send to me the '10 Oddest Travel Guides ever published' with the comment that number 9 was particularly apposite for me. However I didn't actually open her e-mail until I was in Dunkerque, after the night described above. Number 9 concerned one Lee Meriwether "one of the original college dropout backpackers, (who) figured out in 1886 how to travel across Europe on 50 cents a day" (why would that make her think of me, I wonder?) Apparently he did this by "couch-surfing and pile of hay surfing". Half-starving worked pretty well too. That I can relate to - I can't stomach a lot of the food here, and live predominantly on fruit and yoghurt from the supermarket, with the odd meal or chocolate bar thrown in. Everything you've heard about Belgian chocolate is TRUE. I'm doing so much walking here, but won't lose a point of cholesterol - sorry 'bout that Doc. Anyway, friend Meriwether made an "attempt in Italy to combine sightseeing with free lodging. Instead, he reports, 'I was lodged in jail, and the next day brought before an officer of justice, and charged with the heinous crime of sleeping in the dead city of Pompeii'.")

So I get on the move early, and walk along the motorway to Gavelle, the next settlement, in search of sustenance. But it's a Mount Macedon sort of place, geared to providing accommodation for well-heeled tourists visiting the nearby battle sights on the Somme, I would imagine - no sign of a café. But there is a bus stop, for buses going to Lille, and one is due soon at 9.30. This doesn't turn up, so I wait for the next one at 12.00, quite happy to doze in the sun, I'm buggered by walking so far with my pack - no sign of any inhabitants.

When this second bus doesn't turn up either, I get serious and walk back up to the motorway, and snag a lift to Lille after about 5 minutes. My saviour is a crazy Algerian guy, driving to the market in Lille to stock up with fruit and veg for his business. Most of the cars and trucks on the road look very new, but his van would be older than my ancient LandCruiser, and just as creaky and noisy. Nevertheless he zooms up the road, overtaking all the trucks that had roared past in the previous 5 minutes, swerving and cutting in, and nudging me and gesticulating every time he passes a female driver exhibiting ample cleavage, saying 'veery nice', which two words exhausts about a quarter of his English vocabulary. He very kindly goes out of his way to drop me at the main train / bus station, where I discover that no French buses or trains go into Belgium, from Lille at any rate. I'd had some vague idea of travelling up north to the River Dyle, which is where the B.E.F. formed a defensive line after moving into Belgium after 10th May 1940.
However, a train was just due to leave for Dunkerque, which is actually close to where my brother was last known to be, and I was soon on it.