39 students and 5 members of staff set off into the night at 1am on Wednesday 30th June 2010. Destination - Battlefields.
We Finally reached France at 7am and stopped off for breakfast before embarking on our busy tour of the 1st World War Battlefields. We stopped off first at the Lochnager Crater, the biggest surviving mine crater on the Western Front.
After a walk around the lip of the crater we travelled on to Newfoundland Park, Beaumont Hamel. We were given a guided tour by one of their young Canadian volunteers. This was our first experience of walking in the trenches and also walking in the footsteps of the Newfoundland Battalion as they headed towards the German front line on the 1st July 1916. This Park commemorates those men that lost their lives on that day.
Our final stop for the day was our visit to Thiepval Memorial. Thiepval was chosen as the location for the Memorial to the Missing to commemorate those who died in the Somme sector before the 20th of March 1918 and have no known grave. This is the largest of the Memorials to the Missing, and visiting here was a moving experience for us all.
Our visit to the Somme over, we began our journey onto Ypres, the location of our hotel and our tour of the Ypres Salient. We stayed in the perfectly located Menin Gate Hotel and after a good meal in a local restaurant we all headed back there for a well earned rest.
On Thursday 1st July we began our tour of Ypres by visiting the Flanders Field Museum and then we had some free time for shopping. Despite our warnings about buying chocolate as gifts in such HOT weather, the majority of students returned with their cool bags full of bargain chocolate, not being able to resist the temptations of the many chocolate shops in Ypres.
After meeting up with our local tour guide, Jacques, we went off to explore the Ypres Salient. We had the opportunity of going to two very different cemeteries. The first was Langemark, the German cemetery. While this was dark and very sombre, the British Cemetery, Tyne Cot, was bright and full of colourful flowers at the bottom of each gravestone. It’s only when you visit these cemeteries that you get a real sense of how many people lost their lives in the First World War. Even more so when one of our students, Hayden Eldridge, located the name of his great uncle on one of the walls of remembrance.
Our last visit in the Ypres Salient was to Sanctuary Wood – half an hour to explore some trenches and craters. Heidi Reger bravely led the way through the cramped, dark tunnels and even Miss Marsh found her way out of the other end!
That evening 4 students took part in a very important ceremony – the Last Post Ceremony. Every evening since 1928, the Last Post Ceremony has been played under the Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium. It serves to honour the memory of the soldiers of the British Empire, who fought and died in the Ypres Salient during the First World War. Emily Hoogkamer, Annabel Ditton, Callum Irven and Tom McDermott-Brown represented the College by laying a poppy wreath to remember all of those that lost their lives in the war. For a few moments the noise of traffic stopped and a stillness descended over the memorial. At exactly 20:00 hours 4 members of the regular buglers from the local volunteer Fire Brigade stepped into the roadway under the memorial arch and played The Last Post. It was a very moving moment and was the culmination of everything we had seen that day.
Our last day started off with a boat cruise in a gloriously sunny Bruges. Beautiful buildings and even more chocolate shops gave the perfect opportunity for last minute shopping and sight-seeing before we started the long journey home.
Thank you to all the staff and students who made this a wonderful Battlefields trip!
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