"Holiday Snaps" Topic

I have just returned from France, where I visited the Battlefields of the Somme, some WW2 D-Day sites and prehistoric sites. I also found time to spend a week excavating WW1 trenches at Thiepval Woods, you can read all about it here on my blog:

link

Thanks for looking!

What an excellent and informative blog entry, Abwehrslacht – thanks for posting !

Kudos on giving your time to the restoration/maintenance work at the front … essential if we are to retain our heritage in an accessible way.

Phil

Thanks Phil, I'm glad you enjoyed the post. I would be lying if I said the work isn't fun, but we do have good reason to continue the project as well! It's always good to get positive feedback about the trenches as well!

What Phil said, excellent post and you get a gold star for your preservation work. Well done!

Is your neck of the woods open to visitors, or would that be too destructive?

Thanks Jack! Much appreciated! The woods are open to visitors, but they have to be visited by appointment only. They have two tours a day: 11am and 3pm, which anyone can join, just call in at the Ulster tower and ask there. It's part of the remit of the project to educate and inform the public about the war, so the tours are free as well! There was 22,000 individual visitors last year alone!

Thanks for the info, I especially like the free part! I am currently working on my wife to see if we might take a little trip to France this summer. I am willing to trade Paris, and all the shopping that implies, for a few trips to selected battlefields. It will be an expensive trip!

You would be much better served by visiting the north than Paris, tell your wife she can do all the shopping she wants at Arras (which is close to Vimy ridge!). Drop the Ulster Tower people an email and ask about the tours, they will be happy to fit you in! On this trip I also took ten students on a whistle stop tour of a selection of battlefields: Day one: Vimy Ridge. Day two: Lochnagar Crater, Thiepval Memorial, the Ulster Tower and Thiepval Woods trenches, Ocean Villas tea rooms (and trench, which I helped excavate), Serre Road Cemetery Number 2 and the memorial to the three men I helped to recover, Beaumont Hamel Newfoundland Memorial Park. Day three: Sunken Lane and Hawthorn Ridge crater. It was busy and we didn't even scratch the surface, but they seemed pleased with it.

Tell your wife she can do all the shopping she wants????
Rarely a good idea.

Thanks very much Abwher, now I need to dangle a Paris shopping spree in front of my wife and see if she bites!

And AONeill, unfortunately, it is the only way.