I have to stay calm and get the day into perspective. OK, let's start at the beginning. We slept in and didn't hit the road until nearly 10am, which is a record for us. After encountering the usual French 'deviation', that's a road sign not a person, we ended up at a couple of supermarkets and bought about 21 litres of wine at a suitably cheap price. From there we visited numerous sites of The Great War around Albert, presumably pronounced Al-bare. A surprising fact of this town, it is twinned with Ulverston would you believe?! After a few hours in this very sobering area we headed to an aire for the night, Rachel wasn't happy so we moved onto the next aire, Brian wasn't happy, so we moved to the next aire, now we are BOTH unhappy :-( not because of the aire, it is brilliant, but because of what happened en route. Now I have nothing against the French, 'one of my best friends is French' ;-) , however they DO have a liking for gravelling their roads. No big problem with that, until some ........... shall we say less mature motorist drives the other way at 60mph. Crazy gentleman, a blind man could see what was going to happen, yes, we need a new windscreen. It hasn't shattered but there's rather a nasty chip or 2 in it:-/


Photos 1 & 2: Thiepval Memorial - Largest British War Memorial in the world where 73,000 men who have no known grave are commemorated.

Photo 3: Lochnagar Crater - A huge mine crater, the remains of a series of explosions on 1st July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme.