Cambrai 1917: The Tank Deborah at Flesquières, the Belfry and the Bêtises

Required Activities

• At the Cambrai Tank 1917 centre, walk right round Deborah and find the hole the shell made, then work out why she is a Mark IV female — machine guns in the sponsons, no six-pounders — and how a wreck that spent eighty years under a Flesquières field came to be listed as a historic object in 1999

• In the British cemetery beside Deborah's centre, pick out the Tank Corps headstones dated 20 November 1917 — four of her crew were killed where the shell hit and a fifth died on the way back, and the bodies were first put into a temporary cemetery just beyond the village before being brought in

• Climb the 248 steps of the Cambrai belfry, Gothic of 1447–1474 under a dome and lantern of the 1730s that take it to nearly 62 m, and from the gallery where two gallus watchmen stood from nine at night until six each morning until the bells were electrified in 1934, find the four corner figures carved after the 1920 fire — the Frankish chief to the north-east, the town militia archer to the south-east and Louise de Savoie to the south-west

• Buy a bag of bêtises from Afchain and a bag from Despinoy — the two Cambrai confectioners who went to court over who invented them and were separated in 1889 by a ruling that made Afchain the "sole inventor" and Despinoy the "creator" — and decide for yourselves which mint cushion with its caramel stripe is the better one