Exterior Walls on upper level; all covered in names:-

As are the walls on the stairs down to the road level:-

In the upper garden area are two memorials to British colonial troops.

Nepalese Memorial by Menin Gate:-

India in Flanders Fields Memorial by Menin Gate:-

Individual Indian and Burmese soldiers’ names on the Gate:-

The Menin Gate is the impressive memorial to the missing soldiers of the British Empire who died in the Ypres Salient during the Great War up to 15th August 1917 but have no known grave.

The Gate from the east:-

From the west. Yes, it is a functioning roadway:-

The names of the missing are inscribed on the walls. At the Memorial’s dedication one of the speakers, in an attempt to lessen the grief of the bereaved with no grave to visit said, “He is not missing. He is here.”:-

A gentle slope leads up from the road level to a garden area. The Gate’s walls here are also covered in names of the missing. Menin Gate from south:-

The Memorial’s dedication:-

Menin Gate interior:-

Menin Gate Ceiling. The windows seem to allow all the names on the interior of the memorial to be illuminated sequentially as the sun travels across the sky:-

As I mentioned before there was an open air museum right beside our hotel in Ypres (well, 3 kilometres from Ypres.)

A box at the entrance asked for a donation of €1. Well worth it.

This collection of war detritus just inside the entrance can also be seen in the photograph of Hooge Crater I posted here:-

This is the extreme left hand end of the crater lake/pond:-

The blockhouse:-

The crater from a small bridge over part of it. The algae had receded quite a bit by next morning:-

More war remnants. Shell casings, barbed wire support struts etc:-

Trench remnants. Originally German. From them, in 1915, was launched the first flame-thrower attack:-

More trenches:-

The hotel we stayed in in Ypres (or, as it is now named, Ieper) lay right next to this crater formed by the explosion of British mines under German trenches in July 1915. Our bedroom had this view of the crater. The remains of a blockhouse can be seen bottom centre, crossed by the hotel’s shadow.

Back then there would have been no greenery as it would all have been blasted away. Now it is a lovely tranquil spot (if you can ignore its history) where sheep can safely graze.

This is the frontage of the hotel (Kasteelhof ‘t Hooghe.)

Our room was at the side of the hotel. A door from it opened onto the right hand side of the first floor balcony.

My most recent posts have been rather focused on photographs. This is because I’ve been away. Myself and the good lady have been in The Netherlands again and this time also in Belgium.

We drove down through England (and back up again) to and from the ferry and through the Netherlands and Belgium top to bottom and back. I’m a bit knackered.

But…… I have seen Ypres (nowadays spelled Ieper) and the Menin Gate where we witnessed the nightly Last Post. We walked along the Menin Road, a place I had only ever read about or seen in photographs in a shell shattered state, passing Hellfire Corner on the way.

The hotel we stayed in was right beside the Hooghe Crater and across the Menin Road from the Hooge Crater Commonwealth War Cemetery (note the British spelling.) Right by the hotel there was an open air Great War Museum which encompassed the crater and some trench remnants. The Front Line straddled that part of the Menin Road from 1915-1917. Hooghe was where the first use of flame throwers in a concerted action took place when the Germans made an attack on July 30^th 1915. The trenches were apparently only 4.5 metres (4.9 yards) apart there. The flamethrower’s maximum range was 18 metres (20 yards.)

Strange to think I slept only a few more metres away from the spot. It’s all so peaceful there now but reminders of that war are everywhere as the area is covered in War Cemeteries and Memorial sites – too many for us to visit them all.