2nd August 2020
It’s so nice here, so peaceful, green, and calming we thought we would stay another night in the Somme Valley. We don’t remember anything about falling asleep, it was so quiet.
Breakfast is outside. So far we have managed almost every meal outside. How long will that novelty last? It’s busy at the campsite today. People are moving on and more are coming in. All from different countries, Germany, Holland, and Luxembourg. Here we are in the Somme Valley, France where so many hundreds of young men died defending or trying to keep hold of a couple of feet of land, and now here we are all are mixed up together and just “getting along“.
Have a look here for more details about the Battle of the Somme. Very sobering. We are currently next to Bray, almost right in the middle of the map.
We have decided to stay here another day. There is an excellent railway museum here which takes you on a 7km steam engine ride, one of the routes used in WW1 to get armaments to the front so we thought it might be worth a look, especially as the weather is so good. To get there it’s a lovely bike ride along the canal.
Hayley uses some time after breakfast to look ahead at our route and where we are going to stay. She is very good at this and has found us some excellent stays not only on this trip but on past trips out. She takes her time making sure that we get to see the best places, a good overnight stop with facilities should we need them.
We use some of the remaining morning to try and get to the river that runs along the back of the site here in Cappy but it’s not very easy. The banks of the river are heavily tree-lined and where there is a gap it has been turned into private boat launches for fishing.
It’s a lovely warm afternoon, the cycle ride to the museum was fabulous. We arrive in good time having booked the tickets online, we don our masks and go in. It’s fantastic. We will check the museum out after the train trip.
We find a small steam engine that will pull half a dozen carriages for the 7km run that takes in a 200m tunnel and an interesting zig-zag arrangement to get us up the hill which must have been very time consuming back in the day.
Back at the museum, we spend an hour having a good look around. It is a popular place and starting to fill up with quite a line now back up at the door. Have look here at the museum and if you are in the area it is well worth the time, train lover or not! Everyone is well behaved and doing the right thing, wearing a mask, and keeping a distance. The way it will be from now on!
We had a bit of drama going back to the camp. A couple of lads ahead of us on rather large powerful Segways were out enjoying the weather when one of them lost control and ended up in the canal. It could have been very nasty. With the help of some rope, we managed to drag a rather sodden and shaken french lad out of the water while recovering his waterlogged and expensive Segway. Oh dear.
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