Summer Holiday - To Amiens

The trip didn't start well, we got onto the A1 and started heading south. After about 70 miles I ran over a lump of metal in the road, straight away I thought it might have caused some damage, but kept going being careful. I soon passed a car on the hard shoulder with a knackered exhaust, it looked like a bracket had fallen off and I'd gone over it. Sure enough within another mile there was a bang and the rear drives side tyre let go, the van swerved and felt petty unstable. I ran to a halt luckily in an sos area.

I got the spare tyre off the van but couldn't jack the van up, the one supplied with the van was a joke. Time to phone the breakdown company and ask for assistance, a guy arrived in a van with 20 minutes of our phone call, he swapped the tyre is no time. I asked him if he knew where we could get a replacement, but he wasn't interested, just said we'd have trouble finding a replacement at short notice. Looked like we'd have to risk the rest of the trip with no spare! The knackered tyre had a lump out of the tyre wall so there was no way we could get it fixed.

We continued on our way, taking it carefully just in case the front tyre was damaged we started to make good time. Although we'd been delayed we made it to Dover by 7pm. Parking on Marine Drive, we headed into town for a takeaway. The weather took a turn for the worse and it started bouncing down. Thunder and lightening, we got soaked!

It had been a pretty bad day, fingers crossed for the rest of the holiday.

Edgar Moore, Died 16th March 1918

Up early and away on the ferry, we were soon in France. First of all we headed into Belgium, to Ypres and the Aeroplane Cemetery by Zonnebeke.  lt made sense to pay our respect to Edgar Moore, one of my Mums relatives, it's something I've wanted to do for a while. We soon found the grave yard, kept immaculately we looked around, Jack pinpointed his grave, we paid or respect, took some photos and read about the battles that had taken place in the area. Finally we left our name in the journal at the graveyard gate.

We headed back into France and after a few hours found the camp-site at Amiens, on the Somme River.