Holiday Tour Part 1

Sorry for the lack of updates but I am finally settling back following my recent (Military history) Holiday tour through Belgium and Netherlands. One of the benefits of having a son interested in Military history and with only the two of us in the van means we didn’t need to make any of the usual holiday compromises. As a tiny bit of background we did a similar holiday about 11 years ago visiting battlefields across northern France and WW1. We had then agreed we should go again so this trip was conceived. 

Now I am conscious that a number of you following this blog are still working hard and or have many other family commitments making such a trip impossible, it is not in my nature to try and impress anybody and that is not my intention. I am sharing our trip as I know a few of you will be genuinely interested and perhaps a few will be inspired to visit some or all of the places we managed to get to.

I had 10 days away from home and we managed to do something everyday in fact it was pretty jam packed every day. 

Living in the North of England means getting to the south coast takes pretty much a whole day and I would then be picking my son up outside London. To break the journey down I visited the Imperial War Museum at Duxford. I had been before a lot of years ago. Although slightly expensive it is well worth the visit and I had a good couple of hours. For those who haven’t been to Duxford it houses the IWM collection of aircraft and planes, gives flying displays and also has one hanger devoted to the ground war. It is a very expansive site.

Plenty of spitfires on display

Some interesting armoured vehicles in the Battle of Britain section including this lovely Beaverette

Lots on show as to be expected

There is also a Cold War section

There is a separate building for the US Airforce, it’s almost impossible to capture the scale of this collection, which had everything right up to the B52 which made the Flying Fortress look small !

The building with the ground war has many many interesting items amongst them Monty’s command tank from the Desert.

After this very enjoyable diversion the next day we headed across the channel to Calais to Dunkirk.

Set back from the beach is a small and interesting Fort

I took this from an aerial photo at the small museum

You can explore both inside and outside

Accessing a number of the bunkers

Much of the was barracks for soldiers and officers

Historically the Fort was part of the defences built after the Franco-Prussian war started in 1878. By General Sere De Rivières, it has seen a fair bit of action, partly destroyed during the evacuation of the British BEF from the nearby beaches, captured by the Germans, and then held by the Germans right to the end of the war.

We also visited the beach

Walking to the Zuydcoote Battery, this was connected to the Fort and is on a similar scale

An imposing position looking over the beaches

It was once quite an impressive site but partly destroyed by bombing during WW2 it is now in pretty bad condition made colourful by the extensive graffiti

That’s it for now, next up on our tour ‘Market Garden’ but before that we have played our next ACW Shenandoah battle so I need to post that.

Thanks for checking in Matt