Road to Home 2023 Day 9: Bruay-la-Buissiere (Parc d'Oulhain) - Mont-Saint-Eloi

Surely this is the last war that will ever be between civilised nations.

- Private Arthur Wrench, 1/4th Battalion, the Seaforth Highlanders, 11 November 1918

Today's stage of the Via Francigena took me out of the mining villages and into the battlefields and cemeteries of World War I. 

After stocking up on calories for the day's march at the breakfast buffet in the Résidence du Parc d'Oulhain, I waterproofed up in preparation for another rainy day and strode out past the attractions in the adventure park, slithering down a muddy path through the Forêt Demaniale d'Oulhain to the D57 road in the valley, which I crossed to climb up the next ridge along a dirt (mud) track between the edge of the forest and a field of wheat.

I emerged from the fields to pass through the village of Servins, and then crossed more fields and followed a muddy track up and down through the forest Le Bois du Mont to the largest war cemetery in France, Nôtre-Dame de Lorette, containing the remains of over 40,000 soldiers. 

Just outside the cemetery gates is the Ring of Memory, a stone circle 345 metres in diameter inscribed with the names of 580,000 soldiers killed in the Nord - Pas-de-Calais region between 1914 and 1918, simply listed in alphabetical order, without distinction of rank or nationality.

I gave five euros to an elderly lady in order to visit a small museum adjacent to the site, featuring artifacts found on the battlefield and a number of dusty dioramas illustrating life in the trenches. The restaurant next door seemed pricey, so I sat on a bench and ate a bread bun filled with honey from the morning's breakfast buffet. Then it suddenly started spluttering rain and howling with wind, so I sat for a few minutes inside the chapel, built in 1932. When I could see that the sun was shining again through the stained glass windows, I carried on downhill to the ruined church in Ablain-Saint-Nazare.

Built in 1505, the church was used as a fortress by the Germans and destroyed by French shells in 1915 during the Second Battle of Artois, during which 105,000 lives were lost in two weeks. 

The empty shell of the church has been left standing as a memorial.

I sat on the grass among the ruins for some time before moving on to the town of Souchez, where I found a shop open and replenished my stock of fruit and cheese.

Souchez was on the front line of the fighting in the Second Battle of Artois, and has a large museum dedicated to the subject, which however is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so I continued on my way. On the back of the town's monument to the fallen is a poem, or prayer, written by a soldier poet who was killed in the battle at Souchez at the age of 24.

Right beside this monument is another, a reminder that this was not, in fact, "the last war between civilsed nations".

I still had eight more kilometres to walk to my destination for the night, Mont-Saint-Éloi. It was a very peaceful, beautiful path through the fields under a dramatic sky.

Finally I climbed the hill into the village,  home to another church destroyed by war. The abbey dates back to the sixth century,  though it was rebuilt in the 16th, and was shut down under Napoleon, so it was already decaying when the fighting reduced it to rubble in 1915.

Just down the road from the ruined church was my home for the night. I'm staying with a local family - Jean-Pierre and Catherine Degouge rode their bicycles from here to Rome, and love the Via Francigena so much they take in pilgrims, in a village where there are no other accommodations. The town does have a restaurant, but it's closed on Mondays, so I dined on homemade soup, homegrown salad, pasta and cheese in the kitchen with my hosts and three of their twenty grandchildren! 

Today's accommodations: Accueil pèlerin Degouge

Parc d'Oulhain - Mont-Saint-Éloi 29.5 km