Patisserie confiserie

Not sure how , but I resisted these delectable looking little cakes as we were wandering around old Lille.

We were meant to go to the Somme today with our own personal guide chauffeur but unfortunately he had an accident yesterday so we saved ourselves 230 Euros. Well have to go there another time.

Instead we went to Arras which has been reconstructed beautifully and we visited Carrière Wellington where we walked through the quarry tunnels and the extensions dug by New Zealand miners and Yorkshire Bantams - miners who were too short to enlist. These tunnels - 12 miles of them - enabled the British Army to emerge very close to the German line in the Battle of Arras in 1917.

It was a very interesting experience but overall I am just left with the futility and incompetence of it all. Such a waste of human life . I think I need to do more reading to try to understand it all . My history lessons stopped at the industrial revolution.