At a gap in the city walls which once took the pilgrim from Epe to Menin

the Meningate Memorial stands as a monument to those soldiers missing in Flanders' fields.

Why the Meningate? Who does it commemorate? And what does it mean to us? Nearly a century

since its construction we've returned

to epe for this episode and we're standing outside the railway station close to the centre of epe itself

and this is a bit of a follow-on walk really to the walk we did recently on the podcast going from

right in the very centre of Eat near the Cloth Hall

out via the Lill Gate to Hellfire Corner. This connects up with that walk because we're

about to go from the railway station around the ramparts all the way around this time via

the Lill Gate and end at the Mennon Gates where the impressive Meningate Memorial is located.

So we begin outside the modern railway station, which in recent years has undergone quite an

extensive renovation. It's now the railway station and the bus station combined, and it's a very

bustling part of the city of Eap, and indeed was just like that in many respects both before

the Great War at various points during the Great War when this was a route to the front line

and then in the post-war world as well when tourists battlefield pilgrims came into the area to visit

the old battlefields around Epe itself.

The original railway station was 19th century in origin when railway lines were put across this part

of Belgium and it linked before the war with the next town of Popringer and then beyond that

via route into France to the town of Hazabrook.

In the opposite direction, you could go across to Menin, beyond that, to Cortre, up towards

rulers and across to Brussels. So it was quite a connected point. In terms of tourism before the

Great War, this was quite a quiet part of Belgium. In the medieval

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