3 days to visit WWI sites in France

[Kathy]

My daughter's going to join me in Provence for nine days in March, and we've decided to make a road trip to Northern France to visit World War I sites. She's a PhD student at NYU, in a joint program in History and French Studies with a focus on modern European History... the period around the two great wars.

We'd train up there from Avignon, perhaps to the TGV station at Haute-Picardie and at the end of the three days, head to Paris for a night before her flight back to NYC the next afternoon and my return to Provence for a several more days.

I wondered if anyone has done a trip to visit any of the WWI sites and has any recommendations of where to base and what to see. It's the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, so that area interests us. We're interested in the big picture, not just a focus on American involvement. We talked about Verdun, but it's a few hours away and I hate to lose too much of our time traveling to another area. She'll be in her program for 5-6 years, including a full year in Paris at some point, so we can always do a second trip.

I'd be open to hiring a private guide with a strong background in history for part or maybe even all of the time.

 

[Ken B.]

Amiens is a city of about the same size as Aix-en-Provence and with a fantastc cathedral — one of the most impressive in France. You could stay there and have easy access to WW1 sites near Albert (Thiepval) and Peronne (Rancourt) to the east. Another good base city (smaller) nearby might be Arras, an hour northeast of Amiens by car or train. When I went up to the Somme a few years ago to see some of the WW1 sites, I wasn't sure I would enjoy it, but it turned out to be very interesting and often quite moving to see and learn about. Worth it, autrement dit.

 

[Kathy]

Ken, thanks for these ideas. And good to know you enjoyed the WWI sites. My daughter is the historian, but I'm quite interested too. It will be a unique mother/daughter trip.

 

[Pauline]

We visited a few WWI sites once when we were staying in northern Normandy. We only had a morning to hunt out a few sites (we were driving to the airport).

I liked Amiens too. I also liked Abbeville. There is a lovely seaside town, Saint Valery sur Somme.

Wendy and Richard (old ST friends) stayed in Arras last year and really liked it.

The detective show Witness ( we just watched season 3 ) is set in this area. There are threads about it on the TV forum.

 

[Cameron]

You've probably seen this, but in case you haven't -- Remembrance Trails in Northern France.

 

[Roz]

We haven't been to the WWI sites, but we also loved Amiens when we there just for overnight. I wished we'd been able to stay longer. As Ken said, the cathedral is amazing. It's the highest complete Gothic cathedral. We stayed at the Mercure, which wasn't exactly charming, but it was very comfortable and fantastically located just steps from the cathedral. It also had parking, if you're going to rent a car.

 

[TominVB]

The Remembrance Trails is an excellent start.
We were very moved and impressed by the memorial to the Newfoundland Regiment at Beaumont-Hamel north of Albert. Their movements here were some of the most tragic of the war. Sometimes following just one unit during the war will highlight the greater sacrifices more so than a grand overview. For Normandy we studied the 116th Infantry Regiment.

 

[Kathy]

I meant to come back and tell everyone what we have planned. We've booked a private guide for three days and will base in St. Quentin, visiting sites related to the Marne, the Verdun, and the Somme. Murielle has a good plan for our three days, and her background matches up well with Kelly's interests. (Neither Kelly or I have much time to plan this trip ourselves... and this way we won't even have to worry about driving.)

We're excited about this somewhat unusual mother-daughter trip! And I know Kelly will have the opportunity to return to this area many times. (Meanwhile, I'll put Amiens on the list for another trip.)

 

[Roz]

Sounds like a great trip, Kathy. By the way, I don't know if there are any historical sites there today, but I was recently reading that the Battle of Amiens marked a turning point in WWI.

If you ever do go there, try to time your visit to see the amazing light show on the cathedral, where they recreate (all via laser light) what it looked like when it was brightly painted.

 

[Kathy]

So much of France yet to see....

 

[www.hidden-italy.com]

We did this by rail and hire car in June 2012, basing ourselves in Lille. Having taken a Eurostar to Lille Europe, we collected our hire car and drove the short distance to the excellent Holiday Inn Englos which we used as our base for the next three days. From there we visited the Somme at Thiepval (and the nearby Ulster Tower, Ypres (Menin Gate ceremony), Tynecot cemetery, Island of Ireland peace park and La Bassée and area. The furthest drive was Thiepval/Somme, but was not more than 1h 30 from Englos, and it also allowed a visit to nearby Arras.

This was all self-guided; there is plenty of information here and elsewhere on the internet, and we found Englos to be a super base, located between the Somme and Belgian battlefields. The hotel is situated less than a kilometre from the Lille ring road, and also offers easy access to provincial roads as well. The only mildly challenging aspect was driving from Lille Europe rail station to the hotel and returning the car (reasonably straight forward, but the usual perils of city driving). There is plenty of free parking at the hotel and it has a good restaurant and is within easy distance of the Englos Les Geants shopping centre (restaurants, take aways etc, and the super Crocodile buffet restaurant.

We had a very memorable trip and highly recommend it. As mentioned above, it is staggering to see the scale of human sacrifice and should be particularly poignant in 2018.

 

[Kathy]

I wanted to give a quick report back about my mother/daughter visit to Northern France to explore WWI sites. (My daughter is a PhD student at NYU in a joint program in History and French Studies.) This was a very unique trip for us. I didn't know much at all about WWI... the trip was a big eye-opener about the impact of the war on so many countries and an entire generation. The loss of life is so very tragic.

I was so glad that I had booked our guides Murielle and Fred. My daughter and I are both so busy that we wouldn't have had time to research and plan our trip ourselves, and it was good not to have to drive and navigate. We saw much, much more with them-- and learned much more-- than we ever would have on our own. And they are both so passionate and knowledgeable about the war. (Murielle used to work for the American Battlefield Monument Commission.) We had asked them to show us the war from the perspective of many countries, not just the American perspective, but many visitors want to focus on their specific country or even a specific regiment. Because we're from Tennessee, they did detour to take us to the Sergeant York village and monument, and also showed us a small, rather sad monument erected by the state of Tennessee.

Our first day we focused on Verdun and Meuse, the second day on the Marne, and the third day on the Somme. The countryside is beautiful, very rural, but dotted with battlefields, cemeteries, monuments, and museums. This is a part of France that I didn't know at all.

We based in St. Quentin (nice town), near where Murielle and Fred live, so it was easy for them to pick us up and take us back every day. St. Quentin was also good for train connections, just an hour from Paris. We took the TGV up from Avignon to Haut-Picardie and then a shuttle to St. Quentin. The first morning they picked us up until 7 am and we didn't get back to our hotel until 7:30 pm! Our other two days were long too, but they really wanted to show us as much as possible.

This is a link to their website: http://www.hctp.net/index.html Highly recommend!

At some point in the future, I'll try to do a short trip report with some photos.