THE BIG RIDE
We trace a route across rural northern France, roughly following part of the Western Front in the Great War
THE FACTS
The route From Amiens, our route heads east, tracing the River Somme and the supply route to the front. At roughly the area of the Battle of the Somme, we turn northwards to follow the route of the Western Front, as it was in 1916-17, save for passing Arras to the west rather than the east. We end in Ypres, Belgium, at the Menin Gate memorial to more than 54,000 fallen with no known resting place.
Why it’s great It’s a lovely ride in part of France overlooked by most tourists.
When to go Bizarrely, August is lovely as most of France is on holiday and the roads are pretty much at their quietest.
Where to visit So many places, but the French and British cemeteries in La Targette, north of Arras, are particularly poignant. There’s something indescribable about looking at row upon row of headstones…
AS WE ROLL across the undulating and surprisingly smooth tarmac – open fields to one side, dark, brooding forest on the other, mist hanging heavily in the air – I realise I haven’t seen another car for at least 10 minutes. It’s deserted and eerily quiet, with a slightly other-worldy feel, as if remnants of a distant past are quietly watching our passing from beyond the treeline.
The road follows the contours of the River Somme and we are approaching the scene of one of the bloodiest conflicts in the Great War, the Battle of the Somme; the tranquillity is at odds with the events that took place here just over a century ago. As a result, we ride with respect and deference yet all the while enjoying the flowing roads we have to ourselves.
This corner of France is an underrated and often overlooked part of the nation that suffers, in part, from being a handful of miles from Calais, the stepping ‐off point of so many British tourists ready to head to their eventual destination. As such, most simply blast through it on their first taste of the peerless French autoroutes.
Which is a shame, as there is some stunning riding here amid the farms and pastures of often-misty rural France. But there is history here too… and lots of it. The western front of WWI ran from the English Channel in Belgium almost exactly north-south through this region – and there are reminders of the dreadful tragedy of the Great War everywhere you go.
We start our exploration of the region in Amiens, with its interesting juxtaposition of familiar Gothic French architecture and buildings less than 100 years old. The scene of the Battle of Amiens, which was the beginning of the end of the First World War, we pass through
