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It would be an understatement to say
that Northern France is a land steeped in history. It is a land
where empire has fought empire for over a thousand years and an
historical fault line has left not scars but monuments to the epic
endeavours of everyone from the individual ordinary soldier of every
age to great statesmen like Winston Churchill. The Agincourt war
produced some of Shakespeare’s finest speeches and you can stand
on the grave pits of Agincourt where the cream of the French
nobility were buried after having been murdered by British archers
after the battle. You can walk the underground V2 bunkers where
slave labour in WW2 was used to try to unleash a rain of the rockets
developed by Von Braun against Britain. You can stand on the ridges
of the Somme where in WW1 soldiers from many nations walked into
German machine guns and suffered 500,000 casualties in a few months
for gains of several hundred yards. The Somme is a place like
nowhere else on earth. The word awesome is unfortunately a much over
used word but the battlefields of the Somme are not only awesome but
are like no other place on earth. Round every corner is a cemetery,
and the names of its villages have become legends in different parts
of the world.
Northern France is a land for travellers, for connoisseurs of travel
experiences and life. For those who prefer beaches and hot dog
stalls you will be sadly disappointed but for those who want to see
where history was made there is no better place and the visitor
really does feel insubstantial and unimportant in these places where
the past seems more real than the present.
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The visitor to the French departments of Pas de Calais and Flanders
are also seeing rural France in a way which they will never see
simply by visiting Paris. These departments are easily accessible
from both Paris by TGV and from London by ferry or by Euro-star and
the traveller will be stepping into an ancient landscape of chateaus,
walled towns, quite back lanes and cheap restaurants. Northern France
is rural France at its best and the people who live there are by and
large very friendly and welcoming to visitors. In our village where
street light are a very recent innovation still set into the walls of
our house are the rings for visitors to tie up their horses. Our
community of some one hundred and seventy people is staggered by the
people who come from all over the world to stay with us. Villagers
whose only experience of foreigners were the German occupiers in WW2
now find themselves shaking hands with people ranging from property
developers from Texas to cattle farmers from the Australian outback.
Running a tour business in French village which is so off the beaten
track most of the road signs to it have even fallen down is possible
entirely because of the internet and operations like InfoHub (www.infohub.com).
Nobody stands between us and a customer - no travel agents sell our
holidays - our customers stand up for themselves and make a judgement.
For those who want King sized double beds we are happy not to be able
to oblige but for those who want a genuine travel experience and to
go places where a tourists on a coach trip have certainly not been
come and see us.
(This article is contributed by Battlefield
Tours - Editor. For more interesting travel articles, please
visit InfoHub Specialty Travel Guide)
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