Offal Sausage

Wow what a day! I have been awake since 3.30 a.m. and now I am tucked up in bed in our hotel in Ypres at 11.15 p.m. local time (which is only 10.15 p.m. at home in Scotland, but it’s still nearly twenty hours since I got up!) This holiday to the 1st World War battlefields of France and Belgium was originally suggested by Ally in the run up to the centenary of the end of the war last year. He was unable to book time off last year, and we ended up going on a holiday to the area with Heather and Ewan in October. However we are very keen to share the experience with Ally and Cat too, so here we are again six months later, which Ally is very pleased about. 

We met Cat as arranged at Paris CDG and collected our hire car. I was very suspicious that we were about to be scammed because we were told that our car was at another airport terminal but that we could hire a bigger better car for only €40 per day more. But James is made of sterner stuff and he just said politely that we would wait for the car that we had booked, and lo and behold it turned up almost immediately.

Our journey was made very exciting by a phone call that Ally received with fantastic career news, but more of that in another post since he hasn’t yet had the chance to share his news with family and friends.

We saw a sign to Compiegnes and spontaneously headed there, only a small diversion from our planned route, to see the place where the armistice was signed at the end of the First World War. It turned out to have a very interesting wee museum containing a replica of the train used for the negotiating and signing of the documents (the Nazis vengefully took the original away to Berlin during the 2nd World War where it “accidentally” went on fire at the end of the war.)
Next we went to Arras where we went on a fascinating tour of the Wellington tunnels, old quarries which were expanded and linked before the Battle of Arras, and where thousands of allied soldiers were hidden before the battle started. However I was feeling a bit under the weather. The headphones for the tour were tight on my temples and I quickly developed a sharp headache, and my stomach began to churn which I blame on the “andouillette d’Arras” some of which I had eaten for lunch in a small cafeteria in Arras. I knew that it was a sausage but I didn’t know that it is made of chopped up pig’s intestines and possibly tripe too. It’s all lumpy, has a strong smell and an indescribably rank taste. I only ate a wee bit (Ally kindly ate most of it for me) but the taste lingered with me all afternoon. I mentioned it to the guides at the Wellington tunnels museum and one of them said that he loves andouillettes and the other one said that he thinks they’re disgusting! James suggested my blog title based on my unfortunate sausage experience. The good news is that I felt a lot better once I got outside into the fresh air.
It wasn’t far from Arras to Vimy Ridge, which we had visited in the autumn. It was just as beautiful as I remembered, this time with the greenery and birdsong of spring time, with the scars of war, shell holes and trenches, still clearly visible beneath the grass and amongst the trees. We walked up to the Vimy Ridge monument and quietly surveyed the countryside around us.
By this time we were all exhausted so we pressed on to Ypres and were glad to check into our hotel, have a very pleasant dinner and chat in one of the restaurants in the main square, and then totter off to bed. What bliss to have nine hours sleep ahead of me!