For four gruelling years from 1914, the city of Ypres was shelled and reduced to ruins. Some 500,000 soldiers died in the ongoing 'Ypres Salient,' evident in the 170 cemeteries that sweep the city's surroundings. Since the last bomb fell on October 14th however, Ypres has been sensitively re-built and after forty years of work, is now restored to its original medieval beauty, down to its centrepiece Cloth Hall.
Stop at British war memorial Menin Gate, built on the site where the British troops marched through to the front to defend the salient. Listen as every night come sun, rain or snow, the traffic stops and the buglers sound the Last Post, or reflect on the row upon row of white head stones at Tyne Cot Cemetery. Have a drink in once lively Poperinge, where the troops came to rest, or tread the old battlefields.
- For a break from the war memorials veer slightly off the beaten track to Mechelen, a beautiful, typically Flemish city founded in the Middle Ages.