The Somme & The Ypres Salient

Tour Introduction

During this batttlefield tour you will visit many of the sites that have become synonymous with the fighting on the Western Front and about which you will be regularly reading and hearing in the media during this First World War centenary. By the end of the tour you will have a greater understanding of the geography, chronology, technology, logistics, strategy and tactics of the First World War. But above all you will have empathy with the men who lived and died under the most testing of conditions. Many of us have ancestors who fought and died on these battlefields and should you wish to visit a particular cemetery along our route, please let us know when you book and we can confirm to you whether this would be possible; it usually is.

Background

The battlefields of the Somme and Ypres saw the shedding of the blood of almost one million British and Commonwealth soldiers during the First World War. Their names are synonymous with the horrors and sufferings of that conflict and the size of the monuments to the Missing at Thiepval, the Menin Gate and Tyne Cot are testament to the scale of devastation of human life. When on 31 October 1914 the Worcesters gallantly retook Gheluvelt from the advancing Germans, little did they realise that they would be condemning the British and Commonwealth forces to four years of hell on earth defending the Salient around the little Belgian market town of Ypres in what, retrospectively, some have deemed pointless and bloody symbolism. When on 1 July 1916 Kitchener’s Volunteers, the Pals battalions, stepped out of their trenches to walk slowly through No Man’s Land, most of them into their first ever battle, none of them believed that they would be victims of badly prepared and executed planning which contributed to nearly 60,000 British casualties on the first day of the Battle of the Somme alone!

Itinerary