Ypres: Battles in Flanders Fields

Location: Ypres

Local departure by coach or Door-to-Door service, then on to Ypres where we stay in the centre for three nights.

Meals: Breakfast

Location: Ypres, Polygon Wood, Tyne Cot Cemetery, Passchendaele, In Flanders Fields Museum, Essex Farm, Yorkshire Trench

More than 250,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers died at Ypres during the First World War, and we begin our visit by driving up the iconic Menin Road via Hell Fire Corner out onto the ground where the fighting took place. We explore where Scottish troops fought in 1914 at Black Watch Corner and visit the impressive memorial, walk into Polygon Wood, and see an original German bunker, the nearby cemetery, and the Australian and New Zealand Memorials. At Tyne Cot Cemetery, we see the largest British and Commonwealth Cemetery in the world, and then examine one of the most controversial battles of the conflict: Passchendaele. We see the Canadian Memorial and ground around the village where the fighting occurred in 1917. After lunch at Hooge, we visit the In Flanders Fields Museum, one of the most important WW1 museums in the world. We return to the battlefields and see Essex Farm where John McCrae wrote the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ in 1915, and end at Yorkshire Trench, a preserved British front-line trench found in archaeological work here during in the early 2000s. In the evening, you have time to attend the moving Last Post Ceremony, just a five-minute walk from the hotel.

Meals: Breakfast

Location: Zillebeke, Hill 60, The Bluff, Hooge Crater, Messines Ridge, Bayernwald, Spanbroekmolen Mine Crater, Ploegsteert

We start this morning at the so-called Aristocrat’s Cemetery at Zillebeke where officers were buried in 1914, many of them from titled families. We then look at the fighting for the key position at Hill 60, examining the War underground and seeing preserved mine craters and bunkers. We then visit The Bluff; located alongside the old Ypres canal, this was also an area of mine warfare and heavy fighting, and here we see impressive mine craters and the visitors’ centre. After lunchtime at Hooge Crater Café, with time for the excellent museum and reconstructed trenches, we travel down the Messines Ridge and have an included visit to the German trench system at Bayernwald, a place where Adolf Hitler fought in 1914. Later, we see the Spanbroekmolen Mine Crater, now the ‘Pool of Peace’, and end at Ploegsteert, or ‘Plugstreet’, where we visit the Ploegsteert Memorial and discuss the story of the Christmas truce in 1914.

Meals: Breakfast

Location: Ypres

Return home.

Meals: Breakfast