passchendaele battlefield tour

Tour Itinerary

DAY 1 - We make our way from the tunnel into Belgium to make our 1st stop of the day at Sanctuary Wood and its preserved trenches.

Sanctuary wood is said to have earned its name in October 1914 when it was used as a sanctuary to stragglers waiting to rejoin their units . At this time Sanctuary wood was a relatively quiet area but this was to be short lived and it’s name deemed most inappropriate from November 1914 . Today Sanctuary Wood is considered by many to offer the finest preserved trenches on the Western front . In the area we will also visit The CWGC Cemetery and the Hill 62 memorial . Next we move onto Hooge crater and museum , because of it’s unique valuable collections housed inside a carefully renovated chapel within peaceful surroundings this museum is considered one of the best private museums on the Ypres Salient . After visiting the Museum you will have time to stop in the adjoining café and enjoy a drink and something to eat . Our 3rd stop on day 1 will be Flanders Field museum in the town of Ypres , this outstanding museum is a must for any visit to the area telling the story of the major battles fought in the area during WW1 . After booking into our hotel and freshening up we will attend the Last Post Ceremony at The Menin Gate .

DAY 2 - Day 2 Starts at Essex Farm . Essex Farm was the location of an Advanced Dressing Station (ADS) during the Great War, and now is the site of a CWGC Cemetery, as well as the remains of several bunkers some of which were used by the ADS . From Essex Farm we move onto the town of Passchendaele to visit the new British CWGC Cemetery , church and the Crest Farm Memorial . We will stop for lunch in the town before driving the short distance to the town of Zonnebeke to visit the Passchendaele Memorial 1917 Museum . Our last stop on day 2 will be The Tyne Cot Memorial and Cemetery . Tyne Cot is the largest CWGC Cemetery on the Western Front with 11,953 burials. This includes those believed to be buried in the Cemetery, or whose graves had been destroyed. This would have occurred because the Cemetery was started in October 1917, after the taking of the nearby village of Passchendaele, but fighting continued in the region and the Germans retook the ground and held it between 13 April to 28 September 1918 .

DAY 3 - Day 3 starts at the Yorkshire Trench in Boezinge . Here we will see the excavated. Trenches from 1915 and from 1917 . The work was undertaken by a group of amateur Belgian archaeologists, known as The Diggers. The excavations were filmed in part by BBC TV for the "Meet the Ancestors" series. The programme, transmitted first in March 2002 was called "The Forgotten Battlefield". The position of the Yorkshire trench can be seen on British trench maps from September 1916, but the name "Yorkshire Trench" was not used until early the following year. A British dugout from 1917 was explored by the Diggers as early as 1992, but the majority of the work on the Yorkshire Trench site took place in the summer of 1998 and in April 2000. Our next stop will be Vancouver Corner the site of the 1st gas attack of the war 22nd April 1915 . After a bite to eat we move onto our 3rd stop of Day 3 The Cement House Cemetery . This cemetery is actually still in use today, occasionally for concentrations of graves which have to be moved from other locations for various reasons, and also it is where the remains of soldiers who continue to be found in the region are buried . Our final stop of the day is The Langemarck German Cemetery . There are relatively few German cemeteries on the Western Front battlefields, but this one, despite being much smaller in area than Tyne Cot, in fact has many more burials. This is because the burials are effectively several mass graves, although there are headstones (which are flat to the ground) as well. There are also occasional clusters of small crosses. However, these are not actual grave markers . Here we will tour the cemetery and visit it’s visitors centre as well as see the bunkers set within the cemetery grounds . We now make the drive to Calais and return home .