Final-year school trip to Flanders and northern France: Ypres, Vimy, the Somme and Verdun (5 days)

Day 1: Departure from your school and arrival in Ypres

• Departure from your school in the morning, at the agreed time, and daytime drive to West Flanders (about 1 hour 30 minutes to 3 hours depending on your school, excluding breaks).
• Our drivers drive for a maximum of 3 hours, then take a 30-minute break, day and night.
• Visit to the In Flanders Fields Museum, housed in the Cloth Hall in Ypres, then free lunch.
• Moment of remembrance at Tyne Cot Cemetery, the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world, and at the German cemetery at Langemark (free access).
• Check-in at the accommodation in Ypres for one night, dinner, then the Last Post ceremony at 8 pm under the Menin Gate (free access).

Day 2: Vimy, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette and Arras

• Rooms vacated after breakfast and drive to Vimy (about 1 hour 15 minutes).
• Visit to the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, its preserved trenches and tunnels with the Canadian guides (free, booking required).
• Free lunch, then visit to the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette necropolis and the Ring of Remembrance, which bears the names of nearly 580,000 soldiers of all nationalities (free access).
• Visit to the Wellington Quarry in Arras, where British soldiers prepared the April 1917 offensive underground (on request).
• Check-in at the accommodation in Arras for two nights, dinner and supervised evening.

Day 3: The battlefields of the Somme

• Drive to Beaumont-Hamel (about 45 minutes) and visit to the Newfoundland Memorial, a battlefield left almost intact (free access).
• Stop at the Thiepval Memorial, which bears the names of more than 72,000 British and South African soldiers missing on the Somme.
• Free lunch, then stop at the Lochnagar Crater, blown by a mine on 1 July 1916 (free access).
• Visit to the Historial de la Grande Guerre in Péronne, which compares the experiences of French, British and German soldiers.
• Return to Arras, dinner and supervised evening.

Day 4: Drive to Verdun

• Rooms vacated after breakfast and drive to Verdun (about 3 hours, excluding breaks), with free lunch on the way.
• Visit to the Verdun Memorial in Fleury-devant-Douaumont, devoted to the life and fighting of the soldiers in 1916.
• Moment of remembrance at the Douaumont Ossuary and the national cemetery with its 16,000 graves (free access).
• Check-in at the accommodation in Verdun for one night, dinner and supervised evening.

Day 5: Douaumont and return to your school

• Rooms vacated after breakfast, luggage loaded onto the coach.
• Visit to Fort Douaumont (on request).
• Stop at the Trench of Bayonets and the destroyed village of Fleury, which “died for France” (free access).
• Free lunch, then departure in the early afternoon and daytime drive back to Belgium (about 3 hours).
• Arrival at your school in the evening.