Day 53- Ypres & War Cemeteries

I am glad we had a “rest day” of sorts today as firstly I could have a sleep in until 7.00 am !!!

After waking we showered and dressed and tried to find a bakery with a coffee machine… to no avail we made do with coffee from the hotel and croissants from the bakery nearby.

After this we held a planning session for a couple of hours to book accommodation in various parts of our rides coming up and booked our tickets for the ferry ride from Dunkirk to Dover.

After lunch and cleaning and servicing our bikes we headed out for a circuit looking at the various war cemetery’s near Ypres. I think we saw about 6 of them along the way. The biggest was the war cemetery at Tyne Cot with about 12000 graves…. Staggering numbers really. Of this there were about 8000 unidentified!

The most moving cemetery was Polygon Wood which is up on a hill with a special memorial to the Australian 5th Division who were located here in the battle of Polygon Wood. Steve’s grandfather fought here and was wounded and lost a a leg and a finger as a result of being hit by an artillery shell.

The ride for the day was relatively short at 36 kms and although relatively flat we did climb 169 metres.

The photos today are:

The route

8 pictures of the war cemeteries the last 3 of which are Polygon Wood

The final picture is of Menen Gate. They are doing renovations to the structure currently