Day 9.    Monday, September 8, 2025

Arras is only185 km from Paris but we like to stop and see sights along the way. I am navigating and I see this beside our road on Google maps.  I have no idea what it is!

When I zoom in, I realize that this is a gigantic car park!  A bit of Googling and we discover it is a carpark covering more than 28 hectares and containing more than 22,000 new vehicles!  

We arrive at Beauvais to visit its Cathedral but the first order of business is finding a bathroom…not always an easy task.  Then we walk through a huge square towards a carousel.  European carousels always remind me of a trip we made 46 years ago when our oldest daughter was only four years old.  We stopped for rides at every carousel we saw!  Travelling with Sue is similar, she squeaked and squawked until we let her have a ride!

The Beauvais Cathedral was completed in 1272.     

The cathedral was damaged during the Second World War but remained standing and was restored after the war.   The inside soars high above our heads and the light streams through the stained glass windows.Many of the pillars are still decorated with intricate painting.

The centre of the church is under renovation so we are only allowed to walk around the aisles and ambulatory behind the altar.  Bob is dwarfed by the tall pillars.

I take a photo of the altar by putting my phone through the grating in the above photo.Bob took this photo with this light shining through the stained glass windows into this side chapel.

This “clock was built between 1865 and 1868 by Auguste-Lucien Vérité.  It is 12 metres high, and 6 metres wide. The 52 dials display the times of the rising and setting sun and moon, the position of the planets, the current time in 18 cities around the world, and the tidal times.” ~Wikipedia  We wait for it to turn 3:00 but not a lot happened other than three chimes and a few areas of the clock lighting up.

“In the 1990s, the choir started to become very unstable. In some places, the pillars had moved more than 30cm. The north transept had four large wood-and-steel lateral trusses at different heights, installed to keep it from collapsing.

Since 2000, scaffolding has been continually put up around the cathedral to overcome these problems. Also, the main floor of the transept is punctuated by a much larger brace that juts out of the floor at a 45-degree angle. It was placed as an emergency measure to give additional support to the pillars in an effort to stave off any further movement. Presently, Columbia University is performing a study on a three-dimensional model using laser scans of the building in an attempt to pinpoint where the weaknesses are greatest to see what further can be done to shore up the building.” ~Frenchmoments.ca

We take the smaller highways from Beauvais to Arras instead of the toll highway and see this Sommes cemetery.  This is the information plaque.  It is hard to comprehend that over a million soldiers were killed here.  I think that ghosts must walk these fields.

The headstones seem to stretch forever and so many of these young men were never able to be identified.  They are only “Known Unto God”.

I think it is important to visit these cemeteries and honour those who have died but they are  difficult and emotional visits.

We continue our drive and arrive in Arras at 6:00 to meet our host for our Airbnb.