Soldier’s Passchendaele pedal push
EXCERPTS from a 1917 war diary marked the miles of a pedalling pilgimmage from Perth to Passchendaele.
Glenbarr reservist Robbie Semple of the 51st Highland Volunteers, (7 SCOTS), saddled up with 17 other soldiers, to cycle 600 miles from Scotland to Flanders.
The mission also included riders from the City of Edinburgh Universities Officers’ Training Corps, Black Watch, 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland (3 SCOTS) and three support staff.
One of the cyclists, current Regimental Sergeant Major of The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Scotland Kevin Stacey said: ‘It is important that we do this journey on the centenary of the Battle of Passchendaele to show our respect to those who fought in the battle especially to those fallen soldiers and to our modern-day veterans that have gone before us.
‘All have fought hard for our freedoms with some paying the ultimate sacrifice.’
They rode to events taking place for the centenary of the beginning of the Third Battle of Ypres – widely known as Passchendaele.
Each day of the journey the team used a war diary, from July 19 to 28 1917, to mark what their Black Watch forebears were experiencing in Flanders Fields 100 years previously.
In Passchendaele, last Friday, they visited the Passchendaele Memorial Museum followed by the Scottish Memorial at Zonnebeke.
The saddle-sore cyclists returned to Crieff and paraded at the drumhead service in the Market Park on Sunday.