Three busy days of touring the First World War battlefields.

Tuesday morning I had a mildly thrilling ride on the Eurostar from London to Lille in France. Boy does that thing fly!

My tour operator are a Belgian couple who also run a B&B on the outskirts of Ypres. That building had been partly blown up by the Germans in WW1, but is of course in better conditon now.

Travelling around in Mercedes 8 seaters we have covered many of the important sites around Ypres and on the Somme in France. These have included many memorials, cemetaries, battle sites, museums, bunkers, trench lines and so on.

The scale of human losses is too high to comprehend at first. The sheer number of Commonwealth headstones is mind boggling, not to mention the French, Belgian and German cemetaries.

The countryside is however so fresh and green, and productive these days, with lots of wheat, barley, hops and vegetables, and strawberries.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission has over the decades done a phenomenal job, and the presentation and beauty of the cemetaries are tremendous. Few gardens are tended as well, and to top it off the roses are all in bloom!

Highlights have included the cemetery and town of Villers Bretonneux, the cemetery at Tyne Cot, the Menin Gate, and the town of Ypres itself.

Tomorrow will see me back on the train to London, but not till after I visit the resting place of a family member at Armentieres, in France.

Stay tuned for further photo album updates.