Battlefields of The Somme and Belgium

7 nights / 8 days
Begins & ends Paris
1 night Paris, 2 nights Ypres, 1 night Arras, 2 nights Albert, 1 night Paris
2/3 star hotel accommodation

Visiting the WW1 battlefields is a moving experience, a tour that is best conducted in a personalised small group. This makes us flexible enough to visit fascinating places off the beaten track, yet see more in a day at a more leisurely pace and in greater depth.

We discover the Somme, Ypres & Passchendaele, with memorials & battlefield sites highlighted along with charming villages, museums and beautiful countryside, to give you an insight into the extraordinary history of the Australian forces in France.

As we walk over the ploughed fields which were once No Man’s Land, we still find to this day pieces of shrapnel, barbed wire, cartridge cases and other battle debris.

Our tour leader is Kate Stedman, a qualified historian who as Head of History at a leading Melbourne school, taught this region for many years to senior VCE students. Afterwards, in conjunction with her English cousin, renowned war historian and writer Michael Stedman, Kate devised this tour with a particular emphasis on the ANZAC battlefields.

We provide you with a wide variety of different sites and activities to maximize your understanding and interest. Kate will conduct walks to actual battle sites, provide maps and histories of the major battles and give pictorial information on the history of WW1. We encourage you to research your own family history – an easy and quick task – so that you can find your relative’s grave or name at one of the memorials we visit. This has always been a very moving experience for our clients and makes the journey a very powerful historical pilgrimage.

Please refer to our detailed itinerary for the tour content, but we would like to draw your attention to the fact that several of our itineraries for next year include special events:

The first tour is in April to take in the ANZAC DAY dawn service now being held annually at the vast Villers Bretonneux Australian Memorial.

The second tour in July will be to coincide with and participate in the momentous re-interment ceremony at the newly built Pheasant Wood Military Cemetery in Northern France on July 19th for the 170 Australians whose remains were found and some identified through DNA over the last 18 months.

Please contact us for further details as the itineraries will be slightly adjusted to incorporate these special moments.

April 19th - 26th, 2010
July 13th - 21st, 2010
August 28th - 4th September, 2010

$4,299.00 per person twin/double share
$950.00 single supplement