The next day we checked out of Charlotte’s lovely B&B, but before leaving the Ypres area we visited Poperinge and Talbot House. This was a home several miles behind the Allied line where a Chaplain simply called “Tubby” operated a house and garden where soldiers could come and find peace, a little entertainment and above all a welcome from Talbot himself. That’s me with a statue of the gentleman. I guess he wasn’t very tall, but it sounds like he was a pretty popular guy!
Everyone was welcome at Talbot House; rank was ignored so anyone in uniform was welcomed. Of course most officers ended up going to an officers club instead, but Talbot House was a place any soldier could feel welcomed, safe, and treated like an officer. The yard was a refuge of peace with an inviting garden, and inside the spacious home was a welcoming parlor, a dining room, piano, games to be played, comfortable bedchambers, and a chapel just under the rafters where Mr. Talbot offered worship. To this day they hold Sunday services in this tiny little attic, up the narrow wooden stairs on the very top floor of this old home.
After that we sadly left Belgium behind to head south—to France! Along the way, we stopped at a little village and had another of Charlotte’s wonderful lunches, this time in a small Market Square, near another memorial to the First World War. It seems almost all of the towns have a Market Square, with homes and shops clustered around that. It’s one of the reasons Europe feels so much older and certainly different from America, where our smaller towns have storefronts along a road leading in and out of town. It’s easier to navigate but even the layout suggests less community.
We followed the Motorway and noticed that the Northern French countryside offered somewhat larger farms, and endless fields of wheat and barley.
Eventually the signs appeared for Cambrai, where we would be staying. This was to be the only disappointment in our trip, since when we arrived (after considerable time spent looking for our hotel—or even someone who spoke enough English to direct us!) we learned the hotel didn’t have air conditioning. This would have been fine if the cool Brussels weather had followed us, but by now it was quite warm and more than a little humid as well.
We had plenty of places to go during the day, though, and thought we might “stick” it out just for a place so sleep. Cambrai seemed to be centrally located for the places we wanted to visit, but after the next day of touring we found ourselves wishing we’d chosen to stay in Albert—a smaller town with more charm. So the day after that we packed up our bags and transferred to another hotel in Albert (with air conditioning).
Northern France is the actual setting for my current work-in-progress, so I had plenty of places I wanted to see. The villages along the front, which I most wanted to see, have of course all been rebuilt since the era I’m investigating. Nearly everything this close to the Front Line would have been destroyed. But still I wanted to see the landscape, scope the distance between places I’d read about and perhaps might use. And most of the churches have been rebuilt in the original style. The two pictures below were taken from the inside of a typical small church belonging to one of the many villages we passed on our travels.
One of the things I learned was that they have chairs and benches (movable) rather than fixed pews inside their churches and cathedrals. Something I had to adjust in my novel!
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