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What are the maps to the shown to the left and right of our pages (if you have a high resolution screen)?

The map shown is a copy of an original trench map (complete with oil stain...) showing the disposition of trenches on the Somme battlefield at Beaumont Hamel as at October 1916. The German trench system is shown in red and the British in blue. Trench maps are your 'window to the past' and feature greatly in our Self-Drive guides.






Click the above image for our small tribute to all those who served in the Great War
(may take a few minutes to download)

 Copyright© SBT Ltd 2012




Lt Col John McCrae
'In Flanders Fields'
Spoken by Michael Haynes (click link)
(Superbly produced by DesignVision.org.uk)


LATEST
BATTLEFIELD NEWS



1914 - 2014

Centenary

The battlefields remain pretty much the same year on year so our self-drive tours remain the best way to explore Ypres/Flanders and the Somme whether 2014 or any other year. 
I personally find exploring the battlefields when it is quiet most rewarding, so if you are of the same mind then may be consider avoiding the big commemorative events planned for 2014.

 It's possibly better to have visited the battlefields ahead of 2014 so that when you watch commemorative programs on TV you will recall having already 'being there' !!

Please click the below logo for the Imperial War Museum's news page for events and much, much more...


Mine Warfare and the La Boisselle Study Group

Click here for a lot more about the research being undertaken at the 'Glory Hole' at La Boisselle (Somme)

Click video link for BBC news item


In Flanders Fields Museum (Ypres)
The completely redesigned and enlarged In Flanders Fields Museum reopened June of this year!
Click here to go to the museum's new website

Have you any news you wish to show here? Just let me know and I'll be pleased to publish (if of general interest)


BIRDSONG
(BBC January 2012)

Somme Battlefield Tours is pleased to have been chosen to work with the BBC in 2001 and subsequently on two further occasions over the past six years leading a production team from Working Title Films in connection with the television adaptation of Sebastian Faulks's acclaimed novel Birdsong.  We believe we are the only battlefield tour company to have been chosen to help with these productions.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Telephone +44 (0) 1202 880211 or +44 (0) 7776 195773  or email jamespower@btinternet.com



Welcome to
Somme Battlefield Tours Ltd
A fully registered UK company established 1995
.
The specialists in Self-Drive tours to the

 SOMME & YPRES
battlefields of the

.

Great War
1914-1918

 

..

'Best Guided Tour 2009'
We are proud to be the only tour company to have
been awarded Vanity Fair's prestigious 
'Best Guided Tour' accolade for 2009
 

As featured in the Sunday Telegraph

11 November 2012

 

Please note that our office will be closed from
27 May to 10 June 2013
Clients who have booked a tour and need to contact us during this time please text us on 07776 195773
Thank you

 

Please read this bit first - it will only take a minute or so but worth the time...

As you may already have found, there are many companies offering battlefield tours, especially as we approach the centenary of the Great War in 2014.  Our tours however are quite different.  Our tours allow you to reveal the hidden history of the battlefields at your own pace, at a time of your choosing, and for you and just you.  We are also one of the very few fully registered UK battlefield tour companies who have been established for over 16 years and who specialise in the Great War (Western Front) and nothing else.  Our self-drive tours have attracted many national press awards and recommendations, including Vanity Fair's much coveted ‘Best Guided Tour' award for 2009. See below for more!

You may be unsure as to whether a self-drive tour is for you. Our best advice is to have a closer look at our many testimonials to see what people like you have said after they returned from a self-drive tour (see right - or click here for all). Unlike some companies, we don’t just cherry-pick the letters we want you to read. The testimonials you see on our website are exactly as we received them - all of them. None have been excluded.

Our acclaimed Self-Drive Tours

Click
here to jump straight to our Self-Drive tours page - or read on and then look in more detail.

People who wish to visit the battlefields of the Great War quite often think first of a conducted tour.  However, for those truly seeking to reveal the legacy of the Great War, nothing can beat the freedom of exploring the battlefields without the rigid timetable of a coach/minibus group dictating the pace.  How frustrating must it be to see the battlefields passing before your very own eyes without being able to stop wherever you want to stop, for however long you want to spend, exploring what you want to explore!  The freedom to explore the battlefields at your own pace is what sets our tours apart.

The only specialist WWI tour company
to be listed in the


Top Ten Battlefield Tours
2008
"Some of the best tours of the region are provided by battlefield-tours.com, whose guide to the Somme, James Power, has been nominated by Telegraph Travel and Wanderlust Magazine readers for the Paul Morrison Guide of the Year Award"


I
f you intend visiting the battlefield you need to be well briefed. Many visitors just turn up thinking that all will be clear, which will certainly not be the case.  This is where our Self-Drive guide expertise comes in to play, expertise based on having personally conducted over 250 small-group battlefield tours! We provide you with an abundance of easy to understand maps, plans, diagrams and easy to follow narrative and directions.  It is this  combination of comparative 'then and now' maps, photos and narratives that have made our Self-Drive guides so appealing, especially to the independent traveller seeking to explore the past in greater detail.
 

If you have in mind to book one of our tours for 2014 then please do so ASAP as our hotels only have limited accommodation and demand will be high

Our Self-Drive tour 'package' also includes your hotel accommodation and Channel crossing (for UK travellers) all dovetailed together so all you have to do is just pack and go - we make it as simple as that! 

And there's more...

Self-Drive Tour - with the option of including a personal guided tour!

In addition to our Self-Drive tours, we can easily arrange for an English speaking guide to pick you up at the hotel we book for you and take you on a one or two day personal tour of the battlefield. This is a truly personal service and as such you will  be just in the company of our experienced guide and not other members of the public. This service is particularly popular with visitors from Australia, New Zealand and Canada who may already be in France and who wish to focus on specific battlefields where their fellow countrymen served.

To find out more about our Self-Drive tours please click here.

We would like to extend a special welcome to our website to visitors from the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland (Eire), the Indian sub continent, South Africa and China in recognition of those soldiers and workers who came from so far away to serve in the Great War. 

We are a small but caring company run by myself, James Power, and my wife Annette. We thank you for visiting our website, which we built ourselves - and we update every few days!

We accept payment by credit and debit card and are fully compliant with the strict security requirements imposed by all leading credit card companies (click below certificate)

See 'Contact Us' for more about us
(we are based in Wimborne, Dorset, England)

   James Power 
.
about me.
A  member of the
Guild of Battlefield Guides

and

Western Front Association

 

 last updated
.
19 May 2013
 

Phone: 01202 880211 or 07776 195773


Outside UK p
hone: +44 1202 880211 or +44 7776 195773
 

Email:  jamespower@btinternet.com

 



 

Click the above image for our small tribute to
all those who served in the Great War
(may take a few minutes to download)


CONTACT US

Please note that the nature of what we do takes us away from our office from time to time. Email is best, but if you phone and we're not in then please leave a message and we'll try and get back to you the same day as we pick up emails and messages all the time whilst away. Thank you for your understanding.

Click to send an email or type

jamespower@btinternet.com


07776 195773

  +44 7776 195773
(from outside the UK)

 

"My family and I want you to know at this 'Remembrance-time' how much we appreciated all your work for us in connection with our recent visit to the Western Front.....Your guides were excellent.  We would not have survived without them..."

The Bishop of Cork.
November 2010


What the national quality press
have said about our tours

As featured in the Sunday Telegraph

11 November 2012


The only specialist WWI company
to appear in


Top Ten Battlefield Tours
(Daily Telegraph 16 April 2008)



'Best Guided Tour 2009'
We are proud to be the only battlefield tour company to have been selected for Vanity Fair's prestigious
 'Best Guided Tour 2009' Award 2009
(April 2009 Issue)



The only specialist WWI company to be recommended in the Sunday Times

"52 Great Weekends for 2008"
30 December 2007
.
"Mark the 90th anniversary of the end of the first world war with a self-drive tour of the Somme. Somme Battlefield Tours (01202 880211) provides excellent guide packs, with trench maps and superb commentaries."

also. . .


"In Search of Wilfred Owen"

9 November 2008


"
Somme Battlefield Tours . . .which offers self-drive tours of the front. . . including accommodation and meticulously researched notes"


The only battlefield guide to be a finalist and 'Highly Commended' in this year's
'Paul Morrison World's Best Tour Guide'
competition organised by Wanderlust
travel magazine in association with the
Daily Telegraph

2008
 


 

The Independent

The only specialist Self-Drive WWI company

to be recommended in the Independent's

"Complete Guide to Great War Travel'

11 November 2006
 


 

"A special kind of field trip"
telegraph.co.uk
 


 


Copyright © James Power 2012

Ovillers Cemetery, Somme, August 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6e4jqTF6aks

What people have said
about our Self-Drive tours...
(scroll down or click here to see all letters)

"My group and I returned last Friday from our four days visiting the Somme Battlefield. We all thoroughly enjoyed it, thanks largely to your fantastic and detailed information pack. The instructions on getting to the various locations were such that there was no way we could get lost. The ability to compare present day maps with maps of 1916, and of course with the trench maps, was absolutely superb. . . . I spoke to Phoebe, Teddy's wife at the Ulster Tower. She said your tours are the best, and I can't disagree with her! I'll probably come back to you in a couple of years re the Ypres Tour."

Dr Tim Redmond 2012
 


The German Front Line revealed
after ploughing (Thiepval, Somme)
Click to enlarge


The battlefields then and now. . .




German soldiers rescuing a French soldier during the Verdun battle.

The pock-marked terrain of one of the bloodiest battlefields today.








 


Delville Wood, Somme 1916
'Then and Now'

Could those soldiers who experienced the horrors of this wood ever have imagined that little children would one day skip through the trenches of yester-year, seemingly unaware of the legacy beneath their feet...






The 'harvest of iron'. Shells are still recovered today and piled up ready for collection (Somme 2001).

Remnants of the Great War still to be found today (Warning - do not touch unexploded shells, grenades etc. If in any doubt leave well alone)


Fricourt German cemetery
(Somme)



The Basilica at Albert
'then and now'
(click to enlarge)


 11 November 1918
The end of the Great War?

YouTube link to excellent recent BBC documentary

"The Somme - From defeat to Victory"

(click image)

 

// -->

Please note - Somme Battlefield Tours Ltd fully complies with the provisions of the UK Tour package, Tour Travel etc Regulations 1992.  We are fully insured in accordance with these regulations (especially Tour Liability insurance), as well as all provisions regarding the handling of clients' monies.

The regulations provide that such monies be held in a separate Trust Account which cannot be released to our company until the tour has been provided (see
Terms and Conditions). Full details of our trustees (Barclays Bank) are available upon request.  We also operate as a fully registered Limited company and as such our accounts are open to inspection by any person (upon payment of a small fee to Companies House).