With the construction of a new super canal in northern France, linking in to the much older Canal du Nord,

what is the history of this part of the Western Front, and how will this new canal change the landscape of the Great War?

One of the things that I've learned in four decades of walking the old front line

is how frequently the battlefields of the Western Front change.

That landscape has changed so frequently in my own lifetime, and back in the day talking to people like John Giles or Lynn MacDonald or Rose Coombs.

They too had seen the landscape that they'd once known change and change again. Trenches and mine craters, little corners of a battlefield grubbed out and lost.

And on one level, of course, it's understandable. Those who fought and died in the Great War

fought for the liberty of those nations to be free, for the people of those nations to do as they will,

and to build their houses and their roads and expand their communities is all part of that.

And just this year I've seen changes on the battlefields in the Somme.

New tracks have been constructed around Free Corps, near the triple tambourn mine craters and up on the high ground close to the Bois Francé.

Those changes have perhaps brought about benefits for visitors, enabled better access to those areas.

And then at the same time, a listener to the podcast pointed me to the

tree-lined avenue at La Plu-Douve beneath the Massines Ridge, where the trees of that very

evocative corner of Flanders Fields had been cut down, perhaps because of disease, perhaps to allow the access

of new and bigger farming machinery. And while change is understandable and often welcomed,

it can bring with it to a degree of sadness. And when we read about proposed change, I guess it can also

bring about a degree of anticipation as to what that change may bring. And in the last couple of

weeks you may have seen on social media or in the newspapers that a new canal is about to be

constructed in northern France,

the Seine Nord Canal, which will extend some great distance from near to the city of Combay

down towards Compienne, close to Paris, linking up existing canal systems in that area

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