It was time to leave Luxembourg. Packing after staying in the same place is never easy when you need to pack all our gear into a couple of panniers, you always seem to have more stuff. I got it all in eventually and packed the bike for the journey. We said our goodbyes and headed off in different directions.
Not long after leaving the city limits I was riding on beautiful country lanes. I entered Belgium for a short time before entering France when the scenery opened up. I left the mountains behind and the sky seemed to open up like a giant umbrella. I traveled through a lot of small villages and towns. The deeper I traveled into France I noticed more and more war memorials. I stopped at a few, almost all were from WW1, mostly French, some British. I started to notice cemeteries, usually on the outskirts of towns… French, then British, then a German cemetery. I stopped at the German cemetery.
It was immaculately maintained. Two long rows of dark stone crosses, twenty or so deep, either side of a long grass path that led to a large cross that stood in the center of a large mass grave of unknown soldiers. I walked slowly toward the cross, reading some of the names and ages… 19, 23, 21, 29, 18… occasionally the seemingly endless pattern of crosses was interrupted by a Star of David marking the grave of a Jewish soldier. These were positioned closely in between two crosses and it looked like they were erected at a different time, I couldn’t help but wonder if they were removed during the second world war and to be replaced after Hitler was defeated.
I left that cemetery deep in thought, all those young lives. I passed more cemeteries on my journey. More French, German and British. Also American, Canadian and Australian. The scale of bloodshed and suffering during the First world War was becoming unthinkable. The French countryside in stunningly beautiful, rolling green hills, blue sky; there is no hint that millions of men, women and children suffered and died in the most appalling conditions all around me as I ride through this land.
That night I arrived in Ouistreham on the coast, the scene of many battles from another World War between a new generation of the same enemies.