If you have any questions about our Battlefield Tours please ring one of our expert holiday advisers who will be able to help you.

Walking the Somme

The haunting Somme Battlefields offer perhaps the best walking ground on The Western Front. Join us on some new walks for 2008 together with some old favourites. Inspired by the book of the same name written by our Head Guide, Paul Reed, this tour takes a more in-depth look at the tragic events on the Somme.

• 
• 
• 
• 

Click on the thumbnails above to view the full size photos.

Holiday Itinerary

5-Day Break

• Day 1 – To Amiens for a 4-night stay.
• Day 2 – Forgotten Truce, Gommecourt and The Pals at Serre (included). Walk 1: We begin at Hannescamps, studying the forgotten truce of 1915. Then by the front lines to Foncquevillers seeing the area from the 'Little Z' to Gommecourt Wood. Walk 2: From Hébuterne to Touvent Farm to see where Roland Leighton, fiancé of the author Vera Brittain was killed in 1915. On to the Serre battlefield seeing preserved trenches, Sheffield Memorial Park and end at the spot where the poet Wilfred Owen was in a captured German dugout in the 'Heidenkopf' in 1917. B
• Day 3 – Mine Craters, the Green Howards & War Poets (included). Walk 3: We begin at the huge crater at Lochnagar. Then by Sausage Valley to the ground above Contalmaison where we study the attack into the village by the Green Howards. At Bell's Redoubt we learn about Donald Simpson Bell, the only professional footballer to be awarded the VC, then to The Quadrangle, where Siegfried Sassoon fought, ending at Mametz village. Walk 4: Walk the ground above Mametz where war poets Graves and Sassoon served. We see the Citadel and Point 110, and look at Sassoon's Military Cross action. We then follow the story of the Devonshires, and the heroic actions of their poet William Hodgson, and end with the German perspective on the battle on the edge of Mametz village. B
• Day 4 – Guards Division (included). Walk 5: From Ginchy across the ground taken by the Guards in September 1916. In the afternoon join our optional tour which follows the story of the war poet Wilfred Owen. B
• Day 5 – To Calais, and return home. B

B=Breakfast Br=Brunch L=Lunch D=Dinner