May 11 Brugge

Hello to all

This  morning  an early breakfast and then collected by a chap who runs Flanders Fields Battlefield Daytours.  His name was Nathan and obviously a war historian a Flemish background but with beautiful English.  An amazing day. First of all we visited the largest WW1 German cemetery in Langemark, then the world’s largest WW1 cemetery of the Commonwealth, Tyne Cot Cemetery at Passchendaele, after which we were taken to The Passchendaele Museum .  We had a lovely lunch at Ieper (Ypres),  then on to the Cloth Hall the City Centre and then collected at The Menin Gate quite astounding to see.  I was going to visit my great uncle at Steenwerck Cemetery on Friday but I had given Nathan my info and he took us there as part of the tour, we had to cross the border into France and it was only about four kms over the border, it was indeed a moving experience no one from our  family had visited him before.  I took some photos for my Mum and her sister,  they had not met him of course as he died in January 1917.  Two of the ladies on the tour who were two sisters going to visit their Dad’s grave tomorrow bought me a Remembrance Cross each and gave it to me when we got back to the car I had bought one too so Joe ended up with my cross and the other  two and some beautiful flowers, what a lovely thing to do I only met them this morning they were from the UK only over for a couple of days to see their Dad’s grave again.  It was a most memorable and beautiful day.  We have only been away 3 weeks so far amazing.  Talk soon .  Sabine and Sam.