- ENTIRE Cooling-Off Period
- ENTIRE AUD Prices
- ENTIRE Change of Mind
- ENTIRE Industry Accredited
- ENTIRE On Ground Support
- ENTIRE Australian Owned
Le Hamel | Credit: Somme Tourisme
Peace of Mind
Western Front Three Day Australian Guided Tour
Le Hamel | Credit: Somme Tourisme
Itinerary
Day 1 Paris Amiens Thiepval, Pozieres & Thiepval Amiens
Visit the Interpretative Centre at Thiepval to set the scene for the tour and the Memorial to the British missing
which contains just under 73,000 names of soldiers never identified. Hawthorn Ridge mine crater which was famously filmed during the Great War. The Newfoundland Memorial and it's original preserved battlefield with trenches on both the Allied and German side.
Lunch at the Ulster Tower Memorial.
Visit the 1st Australian Division Memorial at Pozieres and the site of the Gibraltar pillbox fortification. Then we
will pay our respects to the many Australian soldiers who are buried in Pozieres military cemetery from the fight
for Pozieres, their first major engagement since arriving in France. Close by is the Windmill site, the highest part of the Somme battlefield, where a memorial stands honouring the 23,000 fallen Australians. In the locality is the grave of Private Russ Bosisto from Adelaide who was found 80 years after the battle. Here too is the Tank Memorial closely positioned to where the tanks went into battle for the first time in world history.
On our way down the Pozieres heights we will visit the site of Moo Cow farm which saw fierce fighting in August
and September 1916. Delville Wood and the beautiful memorial and museum to the South African Brigade.
Fricourt German cemetery where the famous Red Baron was buried for a period before being moved to Germany.
Overnight stay in Amiens at Holiday Inn Amiens or similar.
Lunch
Amiens
Day 2 Amiens Villers Bretonneux, Hamel & Vignacourt Amiens
Enroute to Villers Bretonneux we will pause by the 3rd Australian Division Memorial and the Red Baron crash
site. We will visit the National Australian Memorial and cemetery on Hill 104 and the Sir John Monash Centre. Close by is Adelaide Cemetery, from where the unknown Australian Warrior was taken in 1993 and now rests
in Canberra.
We will then travel to the Victoria school and museum in Villers Bretonneux and see the famous playground
sign 'Never forget Australia'. Weather permitting we will have a picnic lunch at Le Hamel.
View the battlefield of Hamel where there is the Australian Corps Memorial Park with its original trenches.
Travel onto Vignacourt where we will see where many photographs were taken behind Allied lines and where many are on display. Remember me: the lost diggers of Vignacourt tells the story of how one enterprising photographer took the opportunity of this passing traffic to establish a business taking portrait photographs. Captured on glass, printed into postcards and posted home, the photographs made by the Thuillier family enabled Australian soldiers to maintain a fragile link with loved ones in Australia.
Overnight stay in Amiens at Holiday Inn Amiens or similar.
Breakfast, Lunch
Villers-Bretonneux Cemetery| Credit: Lisa-Michele-Burns_
Day 3 Amiens Fromelles, Ypres, Passchendaele Ridge
Following breakfast we will head to the Fromelles battlefield. We will visit the first new Commonwealth war
graves cemetery created since the Second World War due to the recent discovery of a mass grave with over
250 Australian and British soldiers.
We will then head down the Aubers Ridge to the battlefield at Fromelles to visit the impressive ‘Cobber memorial’ and nearby cemetery at VC corner with the walls to the missing from this battle. Here the newly arrived 5th Australian Division suffered 5533 casualties in just 27 hours of incessant fighting.
Close by is the outstandingly beautiful military cemetery, Le Trou Post which was near where Brigadier-General ‘Pompey’ Elliott had his HQ.
Head over into Belgium to visit the famous Flanders fields. Visit the Messines Ridge where the Australians were involved in the successful capture in June 1917. We will travel onto and discover the city of Ypres or ‘Wipers’, the defense of which cost the lives of 250,000 men of the British Empire between 1914-1918.
Lunch in Ypres.
As part of the Messines Ridge attack we will also visit the site of Hill 60 of which a film was made called ‘Beneath Hill 60’. We will then start to head up towards the Passchendaele Ridge visiting firstly the Fifth Australian Division Memorial in Buttes cemetery which is located looking down on 564 graves of Australian men who fought around Polygon Wood during the Battle of Passchendaele.
Then onto the Passchendaele Ridge where we will visit the largest Commonwealth Military Cemetery in the
world, Tyne Cot, with over 12,000 graves and 35,000 names of Missing allied soldiers from around the Ypres
Salient.
Then we will head back into Ypres for a light dinner before the 8pm Last Post ceremony underneath the Menin
Gate. The Menin Gate is where over 54,000 names of the Missing are recorded including over 5,000 Australians who were lost in Belgium.
Following the ceremony we will then head back to the hotel, arriving back around 9.45pm.
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
Last Post | Credit: Milo-Profi
Western Front Three Day Australian Guided Tour
France
From AUD 2,765pp
stars, 78 reviews
From AUD 2,765pp