Our Tours
Now in our 16th Year! The original Flanders battlefield tour company.
Ypres Salient
For the four long years of the Great War the “Flanders Fields”
around the old town of Ypres witnessed the loss of a generation.
In defending Ypres from the attacking German war machine a
quarter of a million men of the British Empire made the ultimate
sacrifice and today lie in “some corner of a foreign field” in
one of the 160 battlefield cemeteries which surround Ypres.
We offer the visitor a chance to walk amidst the poppies of the
old battlefields, to see where the troops fought, the appalling
conditions in which they lived and the immaculate cemeteries
where so many lie buried. Within the few square kilometres that
became known as the Ypres Salient the British Army suffered the
heaviest losses in it's history. The four years of deadlocked
trench warfare slowly created a barren landscape of mud and
despair.
Our tours begin with an introduction that explains why Ypres
became the most famous town on the Western Front. We describe
the ebb and flow of the fighting and, with wartime photographs,
illustrate the almost unbelievable state of the battlefield. Our
minibus then takes you slowly through the now peaceful farmland
that still echoes from those terrible days as tonnes of live
artillery shells are still unearthed every year.
For more information on our Ypres Tours
click here.
The Somme
At 7.30am on July 1st 1916 as the whistles blew and the most
famous battle of the First World War began, hopes were high in
Britain and the Empire that the 'War to end all Wars' would soon
be won.
Just a few terrible hours later as the hot summer sun slowly set
over a scene of unbelievable carnage the flower of a generation
lay dead and dying on the barbed wire of No Man's Land .
It was less than two years since the start of the Great War. In
that time men from every town and village in Britain had left
their families to answer the call of King and Country with an
enthusiasm that quickly created the largest volunteer army in
the nation's history. From factories and offices groups of men
had even enlisted together to form the 'Pals Battalions',
complete units comprised of friends from the same background and
area."
It was these men who now lay motionless among the shell holes
and barbed wire of No Man's Land; half the attacking force, a
staggering 60,000 men lost on the first day of the battle alone.
The savage fighting dragged on for another four and a half
months and deteriorated into a ghastly war of attrition as the
British army inched slowly forward against ferocious German
counter attacks. As losses reached unbelievable levels, tens of
thousands of Anzacs, Canadians and South Africans joined the
fight and forged themselves a place in history.
For the first time in British history a single battle had
touched almost every family in the land as sons and brothers
failed to return, their names today engraved on every war
memorial in Britain.
For more information on our Somme Tours
click here.