BATTLEFIELD VISITS FOR CHILDREN
CROSSING the Channel is not just for booze trips and shopping bargains.
More and more young people and families are heading
for France and Belgium now that the two World Wars are part of the
school curriculum.
And they are joining former servicemen and women as
visitors to the battlefields. The demand is so great that Eurotunnel
have produced a free guide detailing the dozens of war graves, memorials,
museums and battle sites within easy reach of Calais.
Places like La Coupole, which Hitler built to launch
the deadly V2 rockets that rained on London.
Now converted into a museum it traces the history of
the missiles that were the forerunners of the USA's giant Saturn V
rockets that took man to the moon.
Just south of Boulogne is the largest Commonwealth war
cemetery in France at Etaples, the final resting place of 11,000 servicemen.
There is a fascinating World War Two museum at Ambleteuse
while close to Arras is Vimy Ridge where a magnificent monument, opened
by King Edward VIII just before his abdication in 1936, stands on
the hilltop in honour of the 11,285 Canadians killed in action.One
of the most poignant moments can be captured at the Menin Gate at
Ypres where every night at 8pm, traffic is stopped as buglers play
The Last Post at the floodlit memorial inscribed with the names of
54,000 officers and men.
At Dunkirk, a museum is dedicated to the little ships
that took 350,000 British troops off the beaches in 1940 and at Reims
you can visit the room where the Third Reich surrendered.
Copies of the Wartime Memories Guide are free from Eurotunnel
(tel: 08705 353535 or www.eurotunnel.com).
Three-night B&B breaks with Eurotunnel Motoring
Holidays (tel: 0870 333 2001) at the three-star Copthorne Hotel in
Calais, cost £126 per person and includes the 35-minute Eurotunnel
trip for car and all passengers.
Fifteen different battlefield coach tours are featured
by Leger Holidays (tel: 0845 130 7007). Prices start at £129
for a four-day D-Day Beaches of Normandy tour including coach transport,
B&B hotel accommodation and a specialist guide.
Free guided excursions to the battlefield sites of Flanders
are included in five-day breaks with Wallace Arnold (tel: 020 8686
2378). Prices start at £229 and include four nights in a hotel
with dinner bed and breakfast, luggage handling and air-conditioned
coach travel.
3 OF THE BEST
PLACES
1: ROCKET museum at La Coupole.
2: UNDERGROUND tunnels at Arran.
3: THE Menin Gate at Ypres.
GIFTS
1: CHEESES and chocs from Arras.
2: CHEAP spirits and cigarettes.
3: FINE selection of perfumes.
FOOD
1: HARE with stewed prunes.
2: OYSTERS, mussels and scallops.
3: PAIN BAGNAT, rolls stuffed with tuna.