This 3-day Private Tour is the perfect way to explore the battlefields of France and Belgium with your own private guide – expert historian Pete Smith, co-host of the popular BattleWalks podcast. The tour includes central battlefield accommodation and extra visits and inclusions not available with any other battlefield tour company.

Start your tour on any day of your choice meeting your historian at Lille Europe Station to travel south towards Arras. Learn from Commonwealth War Graves staff how they caringly tend to hundreds of thousands of Commonwealth graves throughout the world before exploring the wartime sites of Arras, including the Arras Memorial to the Missing, Faubourg d’Amiens Cemetery, the Arras Flying Services Memorial and the Memorial du Mur des Fusilles WW2 – where hundreds of members of the Resistance were executed during the Second World War.

Spend a full day exploring the killing fields of the Somme and, in particular, the horror of the first day, July 1^st, 1916, the most costly day in the history of the British Army. Explore an original frontline trench, the famous Sunken Lane, the Hawthorne Ridge mine crater, Sheffield City Memorial and Serre Road No 2 Cemetery. Walk through a full First World War trench system including British trenches, German trenches and the shell-cratered no man’s land in between at Newfoundland Memorial Park, and visit the Ulster Tower, Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, Mansell Copse and Lochnagar Crater, as well as the Fricourt German Cemetery to learn the story of the men from the other side of the line.

The last day will be spent in Ypres. On route we will visit the Ploegsteert Memorial to the Missing, the battlefield of Messines, the cratered landscape of Hill 60, the Hooge Crater and Cemetery, Tyne Cot Cemetery, Essex Farm Cemetery – where John McCrae composed ‘In Flanders Fields’ in 1915, and more. To conclude our tour we will attend the Last Post service at the Menin Gate.

• Departs: Daily
• Departs from: Lille, France
• Duration: 3 days
• Price: £890 Single supplements apply and price may vary due to seasonality