SomeKindHand Burial Ground Pilgrimage 2018

[stephen binks]

In July of this year due to Nancy's continued ill health we reluctantly decided to return to North Wales. But at least we managed a really productive period before this.

After overwintering in Buire au Bois, we set out in April to continue the burial grounds of 1918. After a few days at Etaples to complete Wimereaux (i know its 1914!) and Terlincthun, we moved to the municipal campsite in Corbie where we completed a further eighty eight visits; mostly to Somme burial grounds but we also went as far south as Senlis, Oise, where several French National Cemeteries (F.N.C) contain isolated Commonwealth Burials.

After six weeks in Corbie, we moved to the municipal site in Peronne, where we stayed for eight weeks and completed all the remaining Somme and Pas de Calais burial grounds. The furthest journey took us over an hour from Peronne, but the extra travel was compensated by the 10 euro a night site fee.

By July, we were on borrowed time. We realised for medical reasons that we needed to return home and as fate would have it, we had secured the rent on our daughter's flat and was just awaiting her house move to go through. To kill time, we moved to our third municipal site at St. Quentin and hoped that we had enough time to complete the remaining sites around the Aisne region. We knew we hadn't got enough time when we were informed that we could have the flat from the 1st August. So we just concentrated on completing the forty or so burial grounds reachable from St. Quentin. Unfortunately we didn't get chance to complete these either. A week before we were about to leave, as we made plans for the final few, we received the sad news that my mam had died suddenly. And so we headed straight home.

The last five months has been a difficult period for us but we still remain committed to our Pilgrimage that we started way back in May 2012. All is dependant on Nancy being fit enough to travel. We will no longer be able to spend huge chunks of our lives in France, as we now have a home to upkeep. We hope to be able to restart in April 2019 for perhaps 3 or 4 weeks and repeat this three times a year until our Pilgrimage is complete. We have around 600 burial grounds still to visit (1485 visited), so I suspect a further 3 years work. Meantime its writing up our journals and cemetery notes. I will post some images and stories from our last visits over the coming weeks.

 

Thank you

Steve & Nancy Binks