• Pete and Zac trying to decide if life would be better if we drank champagne every day?

  • Now they are almost tranquil amongst the replanted trees, imagine fighting in these trenches - a couple of feet deeper, reinforced with wood, steel, sandbags, etc. and with bullets flying overhead, shells exploding all around and with the mud etc. then raining down - what a life, or death.

  • Grape vines destined to become Canard-Duchene champagne!

  • Poppies amongst the wheat near the Lochnagar Crater

  • The only tree, a hornbeam, to survive the devastation at Devil's Wood

Champagne & the Great War – weird extremes, Luxury & Suffering

On the way home from the Briancon we broke the journey down by calling in on the Champagne region to find out if any deals were to be had. They were! We grabbed a box of six bottles of Canard – Duchene for much much less than we pay back in the UK. 🙂

Pete and Zac trying to decide if life would be better if we drank champagne every day?
Grape vines destined to become Canard-Duchene champagne!

We stayed the night for free in one of those amazing French municipal aire camping sites, then our plan was to go on to explore a few of the Great War memorial sites the next day. With the centenary of the end of the Great War getting so close it seemed pertinent that we finally gave some time to explore this area having passed it by so many times…

I think everyone should be made to spend a short while in this area. It is incredibly sobering to get just the merest of feelings of what it was like, how many people died, and what we have today in part thanks to these sacrifices.

The only tree, a hornbeam, to survive the devastation at Devil’s Wood
Now they are almost tranquil amongst the replanted trees, imagine fighting in these trenches – a couple of feet deeper, reinforced with wood, steel, sandbags, etc. and with bullets flying overhead, shells exploding all around and with the mud etc. then raining down – what a life, or death.

It makes me so mad that one of the biggest peace projects of all time – the European Union – is being threatened by shallow minded and bitter baby-boomers who will throw this all away, at any cost, to service their misguided (and lied to) impressions.

3 thoughts on “Champagne & the Great War – weird extremes, Luxury & Suffering”

  1. I’m pleased to say not all baby boomers are so senseless; I voted Stay and most of my friends of the same age did too, and were appalled at the eventual ‘majority’ decision.

    1. Thanks Paul, of course my sentiment is a sweeping one! Sorry for that if it caused offence, at the end of the day it’s just me venting a little. However, it does unfortunately seem that many of those who lapped up the lies and misinformation that, perhaps conveniently, aligned with their biased world-view were older voters. A sorry state of affairs. I wish there was some way we could fix it…

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