A Tour of Ploegsteert Wood Part Six

Damaged tree just outside Rifle House Cemetery.

Waterlogged shell craters can still be found among the trees if you look hard enough.

A number of bunkers still exist within the wood if you care to search for them.  This early British bunker is hardly the best example (some are in a far better state of preservation than this), but it does give you an idea of what you might find.  A word of warning; you do need to be careful if you leave the path; much of the wood is private property, so you don’t want to be caught trespassing, and you really don’t want to be mistaken for a Ploegsteert Wood resident either.  Particularly during the shooting season!

Yes, it’s another ditch.  But was it always a ditch?  Was it once a trench?  Maybe, maybe not, but Ploegsteert Wood is a place where your imagination can run wild, and, quite frankly, often does.

Eventually, we find ourselves back at Mud Lane where we entered the wood in the first place.  There’s the information board we saw earlier in the right foreground, with Prowse Point Military Cemetery on the horizon.

Prowse Point Military Cemetery, without doubt one of the most beautiful in the whole of Flanders.

Which is why, as we pass Mud Corner Cemetery once again…

…I can’t resist another couple of shots looking up the ridge.

Prowse Point from Mud Lane.

The wind rustles through the cornfields; the men of Prowse Point look silently on.

Final view of Prowse Point before we depart from this northern section of Ploegsteert Wood.

Back at the entrance to Prowse Point.  If you follow the road a few hundred yards east you will come to the house on the site of Bruce Bairnsfather’s dugout where he drew his first cartoon, and later, much later, we shall see if we can find it, but for now…

…we are going to drive west, along the northern edge of the wood…

…back to the CWGC signposts pictured in the very first photograph of our tour…

…and thence south, towards the Ploegsteert Memorial (below, pictured from the crossroads once known as Hyde Park Corner – see trench map) and the cemeteries to be found on the western edge of the wood.  For once, a red traffic light (above) works in our favour, allowing the opportunity to take this panorama picture of the north west corner and western edge of the wood.

Hyde Park Corner.  Just before we visit the Memorial, you might like to accompany Baldrick and myself on a brief Mystery Detour .  If not, we’ll see you  back at the Memorial in A Tour of Ploegsteert Wood Part Seven