The third day of our Roncq visit began with a charabanc trip to the historic town of Ypres, well-known for its Great War military importance. Ypres was the principal city of a salient into enemy-occupied Belgium that was not taken at any point, but at a cost in human life, materiel and treasure that is difficult for me to conceptualise. Ypres was a massive fortified zone with bastions, revetments, moats and huge walls by the time Vauban came along and improved on even those fortifications.
We visited the Flanders Field museum, which is a powerful historial of greater breadth and depth than even the one in Péronne. And of course we went to the Menin Gate for the second time.
However, no photographs of any of that because we posted those last time we visited.
We have to realise that the whole of this city was devastated by the continuous battles of 1914-18. The city has almost all been completely re-built.
In the afternoon everyone else went to Auchan in Roncq, which is prolly the largest Auchan in France.
[By the way Kate, I asked Anne who works for Auchan in the huge Roncq IT complex whether the name 'Auchan' was meant to sound like the French for "to the fields!" Yes it is!]
Thomas met us there by arrangement, but because we weren't interested in shopping at Auchan he took us to the wonderful art gallery and museum in Roubaix which is in a former municipal art deco swimming baths.
Nineteenth century nude statues line the main pool.
And pictures you very rarely see, 'celebrating' the grand revolution as below which portrays the Committee of Public Safety on the night of 8/9 Thermidor, that is, the fall of Robespierre and St. Juste. Interestingly, to me at least, this was the day on which the Law of the Maximum (and hence in terms of economic reality, the minimum) was due to come into effect on the cost of all goods including bread. As if slaughtering hundreds of people a day (many of them one's school chums) were not enough, it took an economic and financial measure affecting French bread prices to precipitate a change of régime. Paris café savants celebrated with Lobster Thermidor - typical!
The Night of 8/9 Thermidor above was painted in 1897 by Jean-Josph Weerts. So it's a Third Republic (near) centennial, then.
There are impressionist and post-impressionist works too, whose subjects mainly portray industrial life in the region. There are lots of textile mills (that's 'factory' to our French readers - though obviously one ought to write 'manufactory', rather like it should be 'omnibus') and quite frankly having once worked in one or two for a short time, that's enough of that.
Thomas was very indulgent with us as he whizzed around Roubaix, allowing me a chance to catch some sort of photo from his car of what seemed like a rather architecturally interesting gare SNCF - above - and a post office below.
Next we called at Thomas's local wine store and bought six carefully selected bottles on his advice.
We picked up Anne from home and went on to the local farm shop for cheeses, conserves, saucison and smoked ham.
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