Mysterious land

Life's an adventure and the unexpected always happens when you're away from home. Continuing from the journal I kept while travelling...

France: After a fortifying continental breakfast, we piled back into the car and headed into France and Lille. Here, we made for the Youth Hostel to drop my gear off. Just one peculiar note: When I got out of the car and waited for everyone else, I was seized by a coughing fit, so bad it doubled me over. C. got me some water and while the choking eased, it didn't leave until we walked towards the entrance of the Hostel. Once I checked in – second floor again - we wandered around, each of my family members pointing out which shops I needed to remember.

I finally managed to get some money out of the machine – I'm not going to tell you why I couldn't do it in Belgium, it would only embarrass me, but had to do with using the wrong currency pin code. I shouted everyone to morning coffee and hot chocolate which the French do exceptionally well.

A band struck up and we looked out the window. Coffee and chocolate done, we scurried down stairs and out onto the street. Our French speaker, S., translated that the Germans were apologising for all the grief and harm they'd caused during the wars! Photos were taken of this too. More wandering around checking out expensive, label shops they wouldn't let me in the door of, then off to lunch. Me, I had the salmon – some of it smoked (yum!) and some of it deep fried (extra yum!), my sister had the cheese with a similar set up to mine, and D., the daring in-law, had the roasted duck breast with duck gizzards... erm. Right. He didn't offer any around. I guess he knew what the reaction would be. I also suspect he's taken Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to heart.

Following lunch, it was time for them to head off towards Paris and home. I waved them bye, bye and suddenly, I'm alone in a country where I don't speak the language.

Well hell, what was I going to do now? More wandering, of course. This is, after all, France and off I went with camera in backpack. But down on the Rue Jean-Baptiste Lebas, the damn choking started up again! When I moved away from the tree-lined street it eased. I found water eventually, and I determined to stay away from foliaged boulevards. I'm too botanically-challenged to know what the bloody trees were but I couldn't hack up a lung if I didn't go near them.

I stayed in a dorm. Sometimes you get good fellow sleepers and sometimes you get snorers and people who talk in their sleep. Lucky me, I got both. For the third day in a row, I'd walked my feet to throbbing messes. Lunch had done for me, so I hit the sack, hoping to be asleep before everyone else. No such luck. It was the first of two nights tossing and turning, trying to tune out snores and Slavic chatting.

The next morning, I had a quick continental breakfast and headed out to the train station. The reason I chose to be dropped off in Lille is its close proximity to the World War I battlefields. I'd tried to get accommodation in Ypres, but a lot of other people had the same plan. I caught the train up to Ypres (or Iepers), then a bus.

Sometimes, life just wants to test your metal, I'm sure of it. I said to the bus driver I'd like to go to the Tyne Cot Memorial; he nodded and I sat down at the front. Yes, I had the bus timetable, yes I kept looking out the window and yes I checked each bus stop.

An old lady across from me rattled off some French and I said, 'Tyne Cot'. She nodded, shrugged in that Gallic way and got off the bus. Shoulda listened more carefully. It wasn't until I was five stops away that I realised I'd been reading the wrong side of the timetable and the old lady was basically saying: "Get off here, this is Tyne Cot."

The walk back was long, arduous and thirsty work. I got off at Moorslede, on the other side of Passendale and walked back – I got some nice photographs of the countryside where both grandfathers fought though and one of the Canadian memorials that overlooks the valley – through Passendale and down the long, long road. I'm kind of wondering if the fates aren't helping me feel what it was like to walk to the battlefield in the heat, without water, and with a backpack on... but that's too spooky, isn't it? You can almost hear the thunder of artillery, the gunfire, the shouts and cries of men... almost.

This land is beautiful; green, quiet and dotted with farms and disinterested cows. Over an hour and half later, I found the turn off to the Tyne Cot memorial and the tiredness slipped away. It's a big cemetery and the first thing you think is "geez, what a waste!" (Of men, not farmland.) But I'm here for a purpose: to find my great uncle's name. To be respectful, I visited the museum first. I know the history of the battles that took so many lives, but these memorials – and they are scattered across the landscape – bring it closer to home. In that, I loathe and despise Haig that much more for his asinine, archaic and murderous battle plans, and admire and respect those who carried out their orders, knowing what would happen but doing it anyway.

I found the great uncle's name and took photos; one name amongst so many; too few identified. Here, it is peaceful, with the white headstones, the green grass, the sectioned farmland and moo-ing of grazing cows. It's impossible to imagine the destruction once wrought on this bucolic scene, and yet we know it happened; we've seen the photos, the jerky, black and white film. But there is one thing guide books don't mention: the smell. It's neither good, nor bad, just there; as if sadness, anger, fear and relief are all distilled into that one, musty, muddy, almost moss-like scent.

Once out of the memorial, I walked down a small road junction. I turned to look across the countryside and the steeples in the distance. One is Ypres. To my left, there was a farmer 'fertilising' his fields with liquid... manure, two cows in the field in front of me, watched me watch them from the shade of a tree. The sweat on my skin has long since dried and I can feel the sunburn. Behind me, a lady comes out and expresses her disgust at the... aromatic liquid fertiliser.

"Which way is Ypres?" I asked.

"Ten kilometres. That way." She lifts her chin in the direction of one of the steeples. "Too far. You take bus."

"I'll take the bus." I agreed and she pointed me in the right direction. When I get back to Ypres, the first thing I did was buy a hat, then water, ice cream and... Belgian chocolates to take home. I feel wrecked; by both the long walk and the memorial itself. It's time I left France.