Goodbye France

~backblip~

Last day of the holiday, boo :(

This morning we drove through some of the WWI battlefields in the north of France and stopped at a British cemetery. I've been to war graves before, but it always surprises me how emotive I find them, even though as far as I'm aware I didn't have any family members die in battle. I always look for soldiers from home, in this case there was just one, unnamed, from the Royal Irish Rifles. Most of the graves were from the last year of World War I, and mainly young men, 18 or 19 years old, obviously drafted in as soon as they were old enough to fight. So sad to think that their whole lives were taken from them.

After that we visited yet another cathedral, this time in Laon, and it turned out to be one of the nicest buildings we had seen. Apparently it was used as a template for several of the other ones we visited, if I'd known that I'd just have come here! :)

While we were there one of the biggest thunderstorms I've ever seen hit us. The sky was black and the rain was torrential. It continued pretty much for the rest of the day, so we got drenched here, and drenched again at the Canadian memorial on Vimy Ridge. It was all very dramatic with the huge white stone pillars set against the black clouds, constant thunder rumbling in the background and lightning forking across the sky. I was torn between a picture of the monument and this one, but I'm a sucker for a wide angle cathedral shot and you've got away lightly so far :)