Bob Lillie's Travels: Heading Off to France

Two weeks ago we headed off for a trip to France. We travelled up to Portsmouth to take the ferry to Cherbourg. On the way we stopped off at the Submarine Museum in Gosport. This is where Royal Navy submarine crews went to get their training for their time as submariners. A cousin of my grandfather, Lieutenant William Philip Lillie, DSC, RN, trained here in 1917 and served in Submarines until his death in 1918.

The Holland 1 - the Royal Navy's first submarine built 1901

Inside Holland 1

HMS Alliance - An A Class submarine built in 1945

Inside Alliance o looking through the periscopes

The Radio Room

HMS X24 - a midget submarine from world war 2

Biber - a world war 2 German 1 man midget submarine

HMS E24 - The submarine that Lt William Lillie served and died on, in dry dock. On 20 July 1918 E24 was lost at sea with all hands off the coast of Vlieland, Holland. Some years later his remains were removed and buried in a war cemetery in Hamburg.

Lieutenant Lillie's name on the memorial at the museum. This memorial is to all British submariners who died at sea.

this is the link to the museums website:

http://www.submarine-museum.co.uk/what-we-have/our-submarines

The next morning we left Portsmouth on the Brittany Ferries Catamaran "Normandie Express" bound for Cherbourg - trip of three hours

Two views of the Normandie Express in Cherbourg

http://www.brittany-ferries.co.uk/fleet/high-speed/normandie-express

On the way out of Portsmouth we passed Nelson's flagship "Victory"

http://www.hms-victory.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Victory

HMS Warrior - the Navy's first ironclad warship

http://www.hmswarrior.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Warrior_%281860%29

Two more modern warships tied up alongside in Portsmouth

The Brittany Ferry "Cap Finisterre" arriving in Portsmouth

One of the old Solent forts defending the entrance to Portsmouth harbour. One of these forts has been converted to a luxury hotel!

http://www.amazingvenues.co.uk/venues/solent-forts/spitbank-fort/spitbank-fort/

Arriving in Cherbourg - a fort guarding their harbour

Cherbourg ahead!

On leaving Cherbourg we had a long drive to our first stop near Paris. After getting snarled up in the appalling traffic of the ring road around Paris at peak hour we arrived at our first hotel. We had planned to spend the next day in Paris, but after that experience we decided to got to the Palace of Versailles instead

When we arrived, we found that there were long queues to visit the Palace so we decided to have a coffee break first.

My friends Eve and Al and my Mum enjoying their coffee. We decided to look at the gardens first.

Looking down the gardens towards the canals

Statuary in the gardens

A spectacular piece of statuary rising out of the lake at the head of the canals

Boating on the canals

Looking back at the Palace

Inside the Palace

It was very crowded

Still we did get a taste of it

In the Hall of Mirrors where the famous Treaty of Versailles was signed after World War 1

The view of the gardens from the Hall of Mirrors

A bed on display

A tapestry

A painting of Napoloeon being crowned as Emperor of France

http://en.chateauversailles.fr/homepage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Versailles

We left Versailles to return to our hotel. Unfortunately we took a wrong turning and entered a

tollway tunnel which headed north! We were to the south of Paris. Once you get on a tollway there is no turning back and no bailing out. We paid a toll of 9 Euros and then travelled the length of this tunnel towards a traffic jam heading for a suburb called St Denis. The GPS then took us back through Paris and many traffic Jams to our correct spot. At one point we found our selves heading straight to the Arc de Triumph before we disappeared into another tunnel and later we had a few views of the Eiffel Tower.