“War Time Europe”

5-Day Break from £299 pp

• Day 1 - To Normandy with our Specialist Battlefield Guide to our hotel in the Caen area for two nights.
• Day 2 - The D Day Landings. We start at Pegasus Bridge where the first British Paras landed and took the bridge just after midnight on 6 June 1944. Hear the heroic story of Major John Howard (played by the late Richard Todd in the film, the Longest Day) and his men, and see the Café Gondré and its Museum. We then travel along the British and Canadian Beaches of Sword, Juno and Gold, seeing monuments and hearing telling stories from our guide. At Arromanches we hear all about the Mulberry Harbour and can still see some of the remaining “caissons” – parts of the harbour. In the afternoon the account of the Americans at Omaha Beach is revealed and we visit the grand, moving Cemetery there before returning back to our hotel. B
• Day 3 - The Road to Victory, then to the First World War battlefields. In the morning we learn all about the Normandy inland battles and the “breakout”, visiting the Falaise Gap and the Polish memorial at Montormel, then travel to Vernon, where Field Marshall Rommel had his headquarters and where the Allies crossed the Seine on the road to victory towards Paris (and ultimately Berlin). Then we head towards the First World War Battlefields around the River Somme, and see Villers Bretonneux, hearing of the Australians involvement, before arriving at our hotel in the Arras, Amiens area for two nights. B
• Day 4 - The Battle of the Somme – a total contrast. We now know how much a war of movement the Second World War was – D Day was a vast rapid sweeping invasion. Today we will learn how drastically different the First World War was – a trench war of virtually static attrition where neither side ever made much progress and the casualties were immense. The Battle of the Somme was one of the fiercest battles on the Western Front. We begin at the Historial Museum at Péronne and then to the largest British Mine Crater on the Western front at La Boiselle. At Thiepval we visit the Memorial to those who were never found and the new Visitor’s Centre, then the Ulster Tower, which commemorates those from Northern Ireland who fell on the Somme, before seeing Newfoundland Park with its preserved trenches. We end the day at Serre and see the area where war poet Wilfred Owen fought. B
• Day 5 - We return to Calais then to Dover and onwards home. B

Included Meals B=Breakfast