Our other tour programmes...

ART, HISTORY & ARCHITECTURE TOURS
Holts Tours will be launching a new Art, History and Architecture brochure in January 2008. For details and to request information about the launch date visit here.

SCHOOL HISTORY & BATTLEFIELD TOURS
We also have an extensive programme of educational tours for schools. For more information click here.




To contact Holts Tours
Phone: 0845 375 0430
(00 44 1293 455 300
from outside the UK)

OPENING HOURS
Weekdays 9.00am - 5.00pm

info@holts.co.uk

Holts Tours
Aviation House, Crossoak Lane,
Redhill, Surrey
RH1 5EX.
United Kingdom

© Holts Tours

Holts 2008 brochure cover
Click here to request the 2008 brochure

 
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Tour Report - Ancestors/Holts Tour to Ypres, 2007
I joined my second four-day Ancestors/Holts tour to the battlefields of the Western Front on 31st August 2007, leaving from London Victoria Coach Station with seventeen fellow group members.
This time the tour was to the Ypres region and, as for my 2006 visit to the Somme, the itinerary for the tour was constructed around the specific and individual interests of the participating members. Once again our tour guide was Jon Cooksey and his rigorous pre-tour research and detailed preparation was evident throughout our visit.
Jon's expertise and enthusiasm for his subject brought to life some of the events experienced by our relatives who had fought during the Great War. As tour members stood in the places where relatives had fought and, on many occasions, died in battle we received sensitive and supportive guidance from Jon, who also created links between the individual events so that they fitted into the chronology of the war.

The common interest of the group made the war-time experiences of participants' relatives even more interesting and, on many occasions, more poignant. It also ensured many enjoyable conversations at the end of each full day.

Not all the sites we visited were easily accessed and it was thanks to the expertise of John Hayward, our coach driver and tour manager, that we managed to see and experience so many special locations.

One of my personal interests was to see the area in which, during the first day of the Battle of Passchendaele, my great grandfather's brother lost his life. His name is on the Menin Gate, so to be able to attend the Last Post ceremony there, after seeing where he died, was an extremely moving experience.

I hope that there will be an opportunity to be part of a similar tour next year. CP
Grave of an unknown soldier, Tyne Cot cemetery
Grave of an unknown soldier, Tyne Cot cemetery (CP)


For information about the 2008 tour please click here.