Douai to Ypres

Here is a simple test: which of the following water features is the odd one out?

Yes, that's right, it's the canal. The others are clearly identifiable as rivers, what with the waterfalls, big bends and fast bits. Not too difficult that, was it.

From the hotel, it was easy to get to the Le Scarpe, a small river that headed east towards St Amand de Eaux. We just followed the D125 that ran past the hotel into the Northern reaches of Douai. Simply go over a railway line, simply hang a right and the Le Scarpe would be there. Simple.

There are a lot of canals in the French-Belgium border region. In fact, 'canal' is a Belgian word, meaning 'A fairly straight man-made waterway with occasional locks that definitely does not look like a river.' There are canals everywhere in Belgium, which is fortunate as Belgium would be even more boring but for them - the Belgians really do know how to take advantage of their flatlands. Unfortunately Germany also knew how to take advantage of Belgium's flatlands twice in the last century. I digress - I've gone off at a tangent - deviated - taken an alternative route. 
The route was not quite as simple as it appeared on the map and we took a slight deviation, digressed, strayed from the beaten path, so to speak. Neil suggested/shouted, at one point, that we were 'some clean pack on our shelves', which I of course, ignored. What he had actually said, of course, was that we were 'circling back on ourselves'. 

We arrived at Le Scarpe and, over the bridge, people were attending graves that were either in a pet cemetery or a graveyard for very short people.

We took a path down by the 'river' and headed 'west'. After a few hundred yards we entered the inexplicably built up area of the countryside. I flippantly, in answer to Neil's question as to where we were, said were were in a town that began with 'L'. I was sure we were on the right path despite the fact we were clearly going through the very urban inner city centre (completely the wrong/opposite direction) and not a cutesy rustic town. Still, this man was not for U-turns. I was convinced of my infallible navigation skills. But, I had to concede that I may I have made a slight error when faced with the combination of the following, one that flummoxed me.

ocean going barges in dry dock

Two towns not actually on my map

A cheerful French man cheerfully explained to us where we were and finished off with a hearty guffaw when I showed Monsieur Bonhomme himself where I thought we were on my map. Tyres deflating rapidly are one sound but nothing compared to the sounds coming out of Neil and Deuan upon the hearing of this news. I was amok, at sea, flabbergasted at my discombooberation, navigation-wise.
I pulled myself out of the hole that had kindly opened up and swallowed me and between us, Neil and I found a route to get us back on track. After all the self-inflicted drama, we had gone 37km instead of 25km - about 7.5 miles extra. 
The hour we lost required a short cut through the Lille Roubaix megalopolis and ditching the river route.

Once we had returned to the straight and narrow, it was time for a traditional snack of coffee and chips before passing through pleasant semi-rural areas along a very quiet D955, passing through villages with quaint names such as Bachy, Mouchin, Cysoing, and the aptly named - being on Lille's outskirts - Hem. 

After a joint operation between the old and the new - my dog-eared map and Neil's handheld, we made it across the megalopolis in quiet Saturday afternoon traffic. 




Ypres was waiting for us like a favourite pair of slippers and chair after the long day in the saddle. We checked in to our favourite hut in Jeugstadion in the South Eastern sports quarter. Ypres is base camp for many British visitors - especially school trips - to the killing fields of Flanders. The town was completely flattened in WW1 but, using German reparation money, was reconstructed, brick by brick and the centrepiece is Cloth Hall occupying one corner of the town's cobbled old square.  
We enjoyed the amenities of our expansive hut before heading into town, through the Menin Gate. At 8pm each eveing the last post is performed within the Menin Gate and has been done so since the 1920s save for a few years dueing WW2 where the ritual relocated to Surrey. We followed the sombre event with a few large Affligems in a bar playing rock music - backwards, considering the racket.