Belgium - Battlefield Tour

History & Citizenship

There is no better way of bringing the history textbooks to life than to visit the battlefields of the Ypres Salient and the Somme. A balanced programme of visits incorporates museums, actual preserved trenches and cemeteries to provide a thought provoking and stimulating tour.

Your tour is based around Ypres, enabling exploration of the Flanders fields as well as the Somme battlefields in France. Almost entirely destroyed during the 1914-18 War, Ypres has been rebuilt stone by stone to its former glory. The moving Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate, in Flanders Fields Museum and St. George’s Memorial Church make Ypres an ideal base for those groups with an interest in the battlefields or poets of the First World War.

Visits & excursions

Ypres Salient:

Ypres, where you can visit the Flanders Fields museum showing how the war affected this town and its community.

St George’s Memorial Church and the Menin Gate.

In and around Ypres there are almost 160 Allied cemeteries such as Essex Farm and Tyne Cot (Passendale) and contrasting German cemeteries such as Langemark.

The Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate where 50,000 missing soldiers are commemorated every evening at 8 o’clock.

Sanctuary Wood (Hill 62) with its authentic trenches and museum.

Somme:

Cemeteries and monuments such as Hooge Crater, Thiepval, Newfoundland Memorial Park, Ulster Tower.

Vimy Ridge, preserved trenches and tunnels, and and the Canadian monument.

Historiale de la Grande Guerre museum in Peronne.

Arras town with its tunnels.

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