Six years later

Six years later Margot, having survived breast cancer and, most recently, open heart surgery, decided to resurrect our travel plans.  So mother, 75, and daughter, 45, have passports in hand and are ready to travel again.



We depart on 21 May and are looking forward to immersing ourselves in French culture.  However, the impetus for this trip harks back to September 1916 when Mother's father, Cyril Charles Clothier, enlisted in WWI (known then as The Great War) in 1916.  As a result of his earlier working life in the family motor business (automobile, motorcycles and bicycles) in Warrnambool he was a prime candidate for a driver during the war.  He drove a Ford ambulance and was responsible for evacuating the wounded from the battlefields - primarily in no-man's land.



Following in Cyril's footsteps on the Western Front has been a long held dream of ours.  He was awarded a Military Medal for gallantry on the field at Amiens, north of Paris, for two incidents.  The first occurred on the ninth of August 1918 from the eastern side of Harbonnieres outside of Amiens and the second occurred on the night of the eleventh and twelfth of August 1918 whilst he was evacuating wounded from the village of Vauvillers.



We will spend several days in Amiens and its surrounds and expect it to be a very emotional time for us. Cyril never talked about the war, which was common amongst his fellow servicemen.  Not only did he have to live with the terrible memories of that time, he also had a permanent physical reminder in the form of shrapnel embedded in his leg.

The other driving forces behind this trip is Margot's love of painting and Catherine's obsession with photography.

We have had the pleasure of travelling together before in Europe, albeit 25 years ago.  First, a 4 week road trip (Mother was the impressive sole driver of a VW campervan) around Europe and Scandinavia to revisit Norway where Catherine had lived for 12 months and attended school at Røyken videregående as a 16/17 year old.  The highlight of that visit to Norway was attending wedding of close friends, Lene and Peyman on mid-summer eve on a boat on the Oslofjord.  It was a truly magical experience as was the trip itself.  Following this, we spent an additional 2 weeks travelling around Ireland (again, a road trip where Mother handled the narrow winding roads brilliantly!).  It was an amazing experience to visit the land of our forebears.