Monday 26th April

I woke at seven and came down for breakfast, watched the news for a bit, then cleaned up the kitchen, did online stuff and watched a bit of tv. In deciding what to do with myself i phoned Tony to see if he fancied a day out, which he did. I gave David a phone to see if he wanted to go with us but he said he was too busy and needed a couple of days notice, lucky him. Tony arrived just after eleven and we headed up north towards Belgium, we took in a couple of interesting cemeteries on the way up, including one for Indian forces with an Indian theme.
We got to Ypres at about half one, it is a very attractive city that was completely ruined during WW1 and rebuilt in the same architectural style as it had been, the result is a town centre you would never know had not been there for the last two hundred years. We had something to eat in a frite shop on the main square, had a mooch around the tourist info office in the glorious cloth hall, which as you can see from the pictures, was completely decimated and took over ten years to rebuild after the war.
We walked from the main square to the Menin gate, Yres is a walled city and this was originally one of the gates in to the city. It is now a huge monument to the service men who died in the battles for Ypres but have no identified grave, the walls of the interior are completely covered by the names of the dead, every evening at eight the last post is sounded here but we did not stay late enough to see it.
We headed out of Ypres and up towards Passiondale, a small village that was completely leveled by the fighting in the area, we visited the Tyne Cot cemetery, the largest cemetery for soldiers of WW1 in the world, including over 700 diggers. We seemed to have hit the place on school trip day as the place was teeming with teenagers, but it was a huge complex and they were not too annoying. We spent a fair time at Tyne Cot and then headed back home, getting a little lost on the way.
We got back by six thirty, Tony headed home and i released the hounds, made some dinner, healthy living Chinese style chicken curry with a salad, not too bad. I had an evening in front of the tv, enjoyed Glee again but i get the suspicion i am going to go off it soon, it is starting to get a little grating. Went to sleep with the dogs on the bed, i am feeling a little guilty about not spending a lot of time with them, but they seemed happy enough.