This is not an advert for Titan Tours, but the travel arrangements were excellent, a really top class coach for the 4 days.  After collecting at Ashford, bacon sarnies etc, a trip through the tunnel, and a coach ride the other side, we arrived at Vimy Ridge.

On the first day we were lucky with the weather, sun and wind, but very pleasant. On the way to the Canadian memorial Richard set the tone for the trip. At the front of the coach, sometimes on his seat, sometimes on the front step of the coach, he gave a running commentary on the country, the lie of the land, the reason for its importance; he set the landscape we were traveling through into the context of the battles.  As you approach Vimy Ridge you do not appreciate its significance until you stand on the monument and look over the land below the ridge, it is an imposing escarpment.

On the scarp side of the monument, the reverse slope which was occupied by the Germans, is this very moving female statue, head down. I have reduced the colour photo to a stark, high contrast, charcoal picture which for me means more as this ridge looks out over what was the industrial and coal mining area of France.

We also visited the preserved trenches and Grange Tunnel.  I hope to have a couple of photos from the tunnel when my wife finishes her film! The trench sections at Hill 62 on Day 3, and those at Avril’s tearooms on Day 2 were closer to giving a feel for those in the war.

After Vimy we went to the very large German cemetery at La Targette. There are some 44,000 German soldiers remembered here, most of the crosses represent 4 soldiers, and the crosses stretch out as far as you can see almost.  On top of that, out of picture to the left is a mass grave for some 8,000 soldiers with no separate grave. There are quite a few headstones for Jews who died in the German army, poignant given the events of WW2. Personally I do not find the stark crosses as emotive as the British white headstones. There is no regimental cap-badge with the German cross, it does not catch in the throat as much as the British cemeteries. 

Posterized the photo in Photoshop to give the  slight ground-mist effect.

After La Targette it was off to out hotel in Arras, the Hotel Univers, first class.  After an excellent meal Richard ‘sang for his supper’, as he would each evening, by again putting the day, and the next one in context.