How impossible to sum up the last 4 days in words when there was so much to see, feel & imagine during our Back-Roads tour of Anzacs on the Western Front. It was the most marvelous introduction for us to group touring as we were just 13 people plus Simon our driver & tour leader. We travelled in comfort along the rural roads of northern France & Belgium, visiting many of the major memorials & battlefields of Flanders & The Somme but also going to some of the tiny cemeteries that are dotted across the farmland & amongst fields where the hay has just been harvested or crops of potatoes or corn are growing. It makes for the most beautiful scenery at this time of the year which was surprisingly quiet - never many people or vehicles anywhere. Simon our guide has a degree in military history & is doing his PH.D. in the British attitude to remembrance of WW1 so was a font of knowledge on all the details & opinions, the strategies & the events. He had personally researched the stories of the four of Geoff's ancestors that we know of who died in this area & took us to their graves or memorials where he told their stories to us all. We hadn't brought a poppy or anything with us to place on the graves so Jude, one of our group generously gave us some for each one & we both felt blessed to be there to honor those young men who we've only recently found on our Hall of Memory in The War Memorial in Canberra. The scale of the losses here is incomprehensible & by the third day I was feeling slightly overwhelmed by the sadness of it all. How lucky we are to have been born when we were & to have avoided armed conflict of any kind. I have been thinking often of all my family members who have been impacted by war through all the generations & am SO grateful for their sacrifices. Our tour included some lovely meals in interesting towns like Ypres & Arras which have been rebuilt in their original medieval form after they were completely destroyed during the war. We also saw the Menin Gate last post ceremony, light show on the cathedral in Amiens & of course the Australian museum in Villers-Bretonneux. Needless to say I took hundreds of photos but will try to just post a few to give an overview of the experience!