All Quiet On The Western Front By Eurostar
- Duration: 4 days
- Board Basis: Bed & Breakfast
- Tour Ref: D2TLEGEBWF
Holiday Summary
- Travel Type: Eurostar
PLEASE NOTE: Price is per person and based on two people sharing a twin/double room. Single room supplements and upgrades are not included.
Itinerary
Day 1
Make your own way to London St. Pancras for your lunchtime departure to Lille where you will be met and transferred to our hotel in Belgium for a three-night stay.
Day 2 - Ypres & Passchendaele
The tour starts in Flanders around the Belgian city of Ypres. Here, one in three of Britain’s Western Front dead fell by 1918 and it has been a place of pilgrimage ever since. We begin by looking at the commemoration of Britain’s dead at Tyne Cot Cemetery, the largest British war cemetery in the world, taking time to also see the visitors’ centre. At Vancouver Corner we examine the use of gas in the trenches and see the moving ‘Brooding Soldier’ Memorial to the Canadians who defended Ypres in 1915 and at Langemarck German Cemetery we see how Germany commemorated her dead and look at the story of ‘Fritz’ on the other side of No Man’s Land. After lunch at Hooge, we visit the preserved trenches at Sanctuary Wood Trench Museum, some of the last original WW1 trenches still surviving in Flanders together with an amazing collection of artefacts and stereoscopic photos. We then travel down the Messines Ridge to Ploegsteert to see the Ploegsteert Memorial to the Missing. Our day ends in Ypres where we attend the moving Last Post Ceremony at the Menin Gate Memorial, held at 8pm each evening.
Meals - Breakfast
Day 3 - The Somme
The Battle of the Somme began on a summer’s day in July 1916 and ended in a snowstorm four and a half months later. It was a battle of contrasts from the blackest day when 57,000 became casualties to the first use of tanks and the change in approach to fighting on the Western Front.
We look at all these stories and start our tour at Peronne where we visit the excellent Historial de la Grande Guerre museum which helps to put into context not just our Somme day, but the whole tour.
We then see the Lochnagar Mine Crater at La Boisselle, the largest British mine crater surviving on the battlefields. After lunch we see the trenches in the Newfoundland Park and then take time to visit the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing which commemorates more than 72,000 missing soldiers on the Somme and see the new Somme Museum here.
Meals - Breakfast
Day 4
Return to the UK by Eurostar this afternoon.
Meals - Breakfast