Our Standard Tour is an in-depth trip through the whole Salient covering every major site. Our first stop is the first aid dressing station where the most famous poem of the war was written. Today in the cemetery that grew up around the dressing station, among hundreds of similar graves, is the last resting place of a 15 year old soldier; a boy who like thousands of others, lied about his age in his eagerness to follow his friends.

Then we proceed to Langemark where tens of thousands of men lie together in a mass grave in the only German cemetery in the area. It's a sombre place with stark black headstones and massive oak trees. Solemn, sad, and very moving, it's a place that you never forget.

Afterwards, as we pass through the tranquil countryside, now dotted with dozens of peaceful cemeteries, we cross over the very ground defended so gallantly by the Canadians during the terror of the first gas attack of 1915. Despite being massively outnumbered and subjected to the horrors of the first poison gas attack to be mounted on the Western Front, the Canadians fought off the German attack long enough to allow the British to bring up reinforcements. Ypres was saved, but two thousand Canadians had died.

Later we will arrive at the village of Passchendaele, a name indelibly carved into the consciousness of the British Commonwealth. For three months in 1917 the Empire forces strove to capture the commanding Passchendaele Ridge from the Germans. The low lying ground below the ridge, poorly drained at the best of times, became an absolute morass as the heaviest bombardment the world had ever seen slammed into the soft ground during weeks of torrential rain. The British and Commonwealth infantry, struggling through the resulting swamp, found themselves attacking impregnable concrete bunkers that sat secure and dry on the higher ground.

As the rain continued to fall hundreds of men and horses drowned in the mud as the attack relentlessly ground on. Finally, in November, Passchendaele village was finally captured as the attackers reached the crest of the ridge. The cost had been horrific. As the men had stuggled through 5km of appalling mud, against some of the toughest defences of the war, 35 men had died for every metre of the way. No tour of Passchendaele would be complete without a visit to Tyne Cot, the world's largest Commonwealth War Cemetery where 12,000 of these men lie together on the slope where they died. The graves of thousands of Anzacs and Canadians here remind us of the sacrifices made by these fine fighting men so far from home.

Our tour finishes when we take you back down into the Salient to visit the fascinating Hooge craters and excavated trenches where you can step inside a German bunker and down through an excavated German communication trench (weather permitting - they do get flooded occasionally) where battlefield relics, mostly in the form of bullets and shrapnel balls, can still be found. This was a German trench, overlooking the city of Ypres, under which the British tunnellers laid a series of mines and blew up the position. The results are clear to see to this day.

Our Short Tour lasts for two and a half hours and is very popular with visitors who have taken our morning tour and who are keen to learn even more.

Our Short Tour visits the infamous Hill 60 and Caterpillar Crater, a scorched and battered piece of earth where thousands of men fought vicious battles both above and below the surface. Today the ground, eerily silent, is littered with the vestiges of huge mine craters, shell-holes and concrete bunkers. Afterwards we travel to the German Bayernwald trench complex, near where legend speaks of a German corporal named Adolf Hitler winning his Iron Cross very close by; re-opened just a few years ago, these trenches, (built by the Germans, but later occupied by the British) are a fascinating glimpse into a German high ground position overlooking Ypres, complete with original bunkers and faithfully recreated front line trenches in the actual position of the original trenches.

On our return journey to Ypres we visit the vast Bedford House Commonwealth cemetery to pay our respects to over 5000 men from a variety of nations who now lie together in the grounds of what once had been a beautiful chateau, now a sad and poignant pile of rubble.

Both our tours visit Anzac and Canadian sites.