One Day Ypres Tour

For four years the men of the British Expeditionary Force stood sentinel around Ypres. Blocking the way to the Channel and its vital ports, Ypres came to symbolise their determination to resist any further German advance.

The famous Cloth Hall at Ypres (Ieper). It now houses the 'In Flanders Fields' Museum

Wet, overlooked and badly sited, the ‘Salient’ had an evil reputation. In 1914, 1915 and 1917, major battles were fought by the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) along the low hills and ridges that surround Ypres. The city itself was destroyed in 1915 and its eerie outline became a symbol of the war’s widespread destruction.

A remaining German pillbox at Goumier Farm on Pilckem Ridge

Even today names like Passchendaele, Hill 60 and Messines continue to evoke the full tragedy of the First World War, while cemeteries like Tyne Cot and Langemarck make the human cost of the struggle transparently clear. Discover the salient and take yourself back 95 years to the cataclysmic events that took place around this charming town.

The beautiful Ramparts Cemetery next to the Lille Gate

Possible stops could include:

Morning:

• Essex Farm
• Soldatenfriedhof, Langemarck
• Harry Patch’s attack from the Steenbeek, 16 August 1917
  
• Vancouver Crossroads/Canadian gas memorial
• Cross Roads Farm and Robin Skeggs
• 1915/1917 panoramas at Gravenstafel Crossroads
• Tyne Cot Cemetery

Lunch at the Café de Dreve, Polygon Wood before heading south to take in the enormous Messines mine craters – the pinnacle of British military mining.

Afternoon:

• Via Polygon Wood and Westhoek to Railway Wood
• Hill 60 and the Caterpillar
• Via Bedford House to Wijtschate and Messines.
• Ploegsteert
• Return to Ypres via the 1917 Messines mine craters

Last Post at the Menin Gate. Dinner.

British trench map extract showing Hooge on the infamous Menin Road