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megram - 55NovOttawa - Index

PHOTO: JOHN BOTTRIELL
At Vimy you will find peaceful fields of green planted with
native Canadian trees. The quietness belies the fierce battles
that were fought on this terrain and the unexploded
ordinances that still lie beneath the ground.
If you go
You can fly into Paris and rent
a car, or as we did, fly into London,
take the Eurostar (the fast train
that goes under the English
Channel) to Lille, and then rent a
car. Or you could take the ferry to
Calais if you prefer. (The train from
London to Lille takes 1.5 hours;the
ferry from Dover also takes 1.5
hours, but connections from
London to Dover and Calais to
Vimy may make the trip much
longer — up to six hours.)
You can reach Arras, the closest
town to Vimy, by train or by bus and
from there take a taxi to the memorial.
You can even rent a bike at the
train station and get to Vimy that way.
Tours of the battlefields, including
a trip to Vimy, are also available.
Ask your travel agent or type in
“Vimy tours”on your search engine.
Where to stay
We used the Logis de France system
(available on the Internet) and
stayed in a lovely little inn in a small
village called Gavrelle, eight kilometres
from Vimy.There are hotels and
B&Bs in Arras, which is only 10 kilometres
from Vimy, or even as far
away as Lille if you prefer a larger
centre and want to tour the area
generally.
November/December 2008 • Ottawa 38 • Fifty-Five Plus Magazine
Directions
We found that Veterans Affairs
Canada gave us the best information
on how to reach the site.The website
is www.vac-acc.gc.ca, then choose
Canada Remembers, click on
Memorials, then Memorials in
Europe, Memorials in France, then
Vimy, and then General Information.
At the front of the monument stands a
beautiful sculpture of a young woman
looking out over the Douai Plain, carved
from one 30-tonne block of stone, representing
Canada as a young nation,
mourning her dead.
PHOTO: JOHN BOTTRIELL