VISITING twin-town Blackburn in 1951 as it celebrated the centenary of its charter of incorporation, the Mayor of Peronne in France, M. Daniel Boinet, his wife and 13-year-old daughter and Micheline toured giant Waterfall Mill which had one of the largest automatic weaving sheds in Lancashire.

But though the Boinets showed keen interest in the textile process, it is possible that their minds were also occupied by the matter of lunch.

For they and the rest of the 11-strong party from the town that Blackburn adopted in 1921 after its devastation in the First World War had had a decidedly light breakfast that day at the White Bull hotel -- just bread rolls, marmalade and coffee, reported the Northern Daily Telegraph.

All of them turned down a British breakfast of bacon and tomatoes on the grounds that it was 'too big.'

But 27 years earlier when a deputation went from Blackburn to Peronne, its ten members, including the Mayor and Mayoress and the Chief Constable, were far from over-faced by French cuisine -- they nearly missed their train to the Somme town because they spent so long over lunch at the railway station after disembarking at Boulogne. "Our party were apparently so enamoured of the French fare set before them that they lingered at the table to within seven minutes of train time," said the official report of their visit.

"Considering that the departure platform was seven minutes' walk away, we were very lucky indeed not to be left behind. As it was, the Mayor and Mayoress were obliged to travel third-class to Etaples (the first stopping place) because the reserved coaches were up in the front portion of the train and the authorities would not wait a second beyond the scheduled time of departure.

"On rejoining us, the Mayor expressed himself as none the worse. In fact, he had gained by the experience. As a result, however, he exhorted us never to travel third-class on a French railway if we could avoid it."

Blackburn had adopted Peronne and the neighbouring village of Maricourt after a movement began in 1920 in England for its towns to aid French ones ruined in the 1914-18 conflict -- with the two communities being in the area of the 1916 Battle of the Somme in which many Blackburn men took part and where the East Lancashire Territorial Division had fought with great distinction in the great German offensive of March, 1918. Though fund-raising to aid Peronne and Maricourt coincided with sharp economic depression in Blackburn, special events and house-to-house collections raised the then-huge sum of almost £2,000, which bought £250-worth of agricultural machinery for Maricourt's farmers and a £1,700 new bridge over the Somme at Peronne -- which was named the 'Pont de Blackburn' in the 1924 opening ceremony to which the town's delegation travelled.