Last week-end, in company with eight other members of the Wessex Military Society, I made a pilgrimage to the battlefield of Waterloo - it was a three day jaunt which will stay forever in MY memory! I am recording it here because I am certain that those readers of this magazine who have not been there would find as much pleasure in a visit as we did and the whole business of getting there is so relatively simple that it seems unfair to keep it to myself.
You go over on a Townsend ferry from Dover, either to Zeebrugge or to Ostend. We chose the former because we heard there was a very good military museum there but in the event we did not have the time to visit it although we passed by its doors twice. We went on a Friday morning and came back from Zeebrugge at mid-day on the following Sunday -- if a car and party go for less than four days then the car travels free. This meant we had four men in one car and five in the other and we only paid their fares which totalled 5 pounds. 4s. -d. return per person. We split the cost of petrol oil etc., and in our car holding five it came to 3 pounds -s. -d. per head. No one can moan about getting from Southampton to Waterloo and back for 8 pounds. 4s. -d., can they?
We stayed at the Hotel-Restaurant Wellington, 379 Rue du Lion, Braine-l'Allaud, where a double room cost 225 francs or a single room 175 francs; Continental breakfast cost 35 francs and we had a sumptuous five course dinner each night for 175 francs (120 francs = 1 pound sterling). This hotel is comfortable and you are made very welcome -- it is right on the crossroads about 50 yards away from the farm of La Haye Sainte and a few yards from the spot where stood the tree under which Wellington commanded the battle for most of the day.
There is nothing much about Waterloo that will not be known to readers. Suffice to say, we found a terrific atmosphere at Hugomont where the walls are now short of a few pieces of rubble which proudly decorate our wargames rooms back in Southampton. It is possible to get a very fair idea of the battle from the undulations of the ground and to note just how the solid buildings were relatively unaffected (except for their roofs catching fire) by the solid shot of the artillery of the period.
We stood on the spot near Belle Alliance from which Napoleon conducted the battle and thought that his view the proceedings was not particularly good. The general opinion amongst our party was that any average wargamer would have handled the French army better than the great man did himself!
We chased around Brussels but found very little to offer in the way of wargaming items. It is only fair to admit that the trip was very rushed and that we saw most of the battlefield mainly by getting up at 6 o'clock each morning (the proprietor obligingly opened the Hotel to let us out on the first morning and on the second morning he and his wife were down waiting with breakfast -- we had had the meal and settled our bills by 7 a.m.!). More time should be allowed to follow the road up to Quatre Bras and to work out the Prussian activities around Ligny, to say nothing of seeing the French exhibits at Caillou and the Wellington Museum in the town of Waterloo itself. That sounds as if we did not see much but I can assure you that we saw plenty, ate plenty, drank plenty and had a most memorable week-end at a comparatively low cost.
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© Copyright 1970 by Donald Featherstone.
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