Staying at Avril Williams Place!!

We all stayed at Avril Williams place "Ocean Villas" in Auchonvillers, an old farm house now rebuilt after WW1 on its original cellar, she's extended it a little and she can quite comfortably have 16 people staying, it leads to some very lively evenings over dinner, wine, cheese and beer, many an evening has extended into the early hours of the following morning. Auchonvillers was behind the lines but still heavily shelled and much of it was flattened, Avrils place as I've already said was rebuilt over its original cellar which was used as a dressing station before the wounded were moved onto field hospitals further behind the lines, the cellar was also used on the odd occasion to keep prisoners over night while awaiting court martial/execution, one infamous case been that of James Crozier.

A communication trench ran through the village linking up all the cellars of all the houses in the village the one at Avrils has been excavated and restored to an "as it would have been" condition, hundreds of artefacts were found during the dig and many are in display around Ocean Villas for all who stay to look at.

The guy in the second trench photograph is my nephew Greg "Smiler" Colson, enjoying his first trip out to the WW1 Battlefields of The Somme (well he at least he told me he was enjoying it, but he had had a few beers at the time).