Mat McLachlan Battlefield Tours | Tours - Anzac Day on the Western Front

Prices (per person, twin share)
2-day / 1-night Somme Tour	$847 (single supplement: $209)
3-day / 2-night Somme and Ypres Tour	$1247 (single supplement: $374)

Western Front Private Tours
2- or 3-day fully escorted tours Depart any day

Visit the Australian battlefields in France and Belgium in comfort and convenience on a private tour. Our expert guides will drive you on a personalised 2- or 3-day tour, taking you to all the major Australian battle sites, and tailoring the itinerary to visit the places that are most important to you. The battlefields are only a one-hour train ride north of Paris, and our private tours can begin on any day you choose, meaning a private battlefield tour will easily slot into your holiday itinerary. And unlike other tour companies, we use only 4-star hotels on our private tours, meaning that our guests enjoy a superior level of comfort and an enhanced travel experience. We also use the best guides in the business — Mat McLachlan hand picks every guide who escorts our tours, and personally designs the perfect itinerary for Australian travellers. A private tour is the next best thing to being there with Mat himself!

Your private tour includes:

2 or 3 days fully escorted private touring with an expert English-speaking guide
Itinerary tailored to your specific wishes
The opportunity to discuss your battlefield travel plans with Mat McLachlan
Comprehensive touring of all the major Australian battle sites, including many out-of-the-way sites visited only by Mat McLachlan Battlefield Tours
Travel by deluxe air-conditioned minibus
An insight into French and Belgian local culture
Visits to specific cemeteries and graves (if within tour area)
All inclusions and admissions as described in the itinerary
Reference to period photos and maps carried by our guides
4-star hotel accommodation
Breakfast daily
Autographed copy of Mat McLachlan's definitive guide to the Western Front, Walking with the Anzacs
Commemorative cap

2-day/1-night Somme Tour

Visit the places where Australian troops played such a vital role in 1916 and 1918, on one of the world’s most infamous battlefields — the Somme. This tour is an excellent option for travellers who want to see many of the Australian battle sites but don’t have time for a full battlefield tour.

(This itinerary is a suggestion only — each private tour can be modified to visit those sites you most want to see).

DAY 1 SOMME 1916 & 1918

Your tour begins in Amiens, in the heart of the Somme. The most convenient way to travel to Amiens is by train — it is only an hour north of Paris. You will be met by your guide at Amiens train station at 9.30am. You will then enjoy a full day visiting the sites associated with Australian courage and sacrifice on the Somme in both 1916 and 1918. Essential sites include the village of Pozieres, scene of the most costly battle in Australia’s history, where 23,000 men were killed or wounded in six weeks. Nearby is Mouquet Farm, where the Australians and Germans fought a bloody action in August 1916. Also spend time exploring the British sites associated with the Battle of the Somme, including the massive 30-metre-deep Lochnagar Mine Crater, the Thiepval Memorial (where the names of 72,000 missing men are recorded) and the preserved trenches at the Newfoundland Memorial Park, Beaumont-Hamel. Our attention will then turn to the 1918 battles on the Somme, with a visit to Villers-Bretonneux, the town that was liberated by Australian troops on Anzac Day 1918. Here we will visit Victoria School (with its wonderful small Australian museum), Adelaide Cemetery (where Australia’s Unknown Soldier lay before being reinterred in Canberra in 1993) and the imposing Australian National Memorial, where the names of nearly 11,000 Australians with no known grave in France are recorded. We will also visit the site of the crash of the Red Baron in 1918, the scene of the great Australian victory at Hamel and the Australian 2nd Divisional Memorial at Mont St Quentin. Here we will also see the remains of trenches captured by the Australians in their victory in September 1918. We will then return to Amiens where you will check in to your 4-star hotel.

DAY 2 HINDENBURG LINE 1917 & 1918

Today we will follow in the footsteps of the Anzacs during the bloody fighting in France in 1917, and the attacks of late-1918 that brought the First World War to an end. Sites visited today include the battlefield of Bullecourt, where Australia lost 10,000 men in two great attacks in April and May 1917. We will then head east, through the town of Bapaume and out into the fields where Australia performed arguably its greatest attacks of the war, in late-1918. This chapter of Anzac history is not as well known as it should be, and always has a moving effect on visitors to the battlefields. Sites visited today include the 4th Division Memorial at Bellenglise, the St Quentin Canal Tunnel at Bellicourt, the village of Epehy and Australia’s last battlefield of the war at Montbrehain. At the end of this moving day your guide will drive you back to Amiens train station for your return journey to Paris. (B)

3-day/2-night Somme and Ypres Tour

Visit all the key Australian battlefield sites in France and Belgium on this comprehensive tour. With an expert guide personally escorting you for three full days of touring, this is the perfect way to see all the Western Front battlefields have to offer. This tour comes highly recommended.

(This itinerary is a suggestion only — each private tour can be modified to visit those sites you most want to see).

DAY 1 SOMME 1916 & 1918

Your tour begins in Amiens, in the heart of the Somme. The most convenient way to travel to Amiens is by train — it is only an hour north of Paris. You will be met by your guide at Amiens train station at 9.30am. You will then enjoy a full day visiting the sites associated with Australian courage and sacrifice on the Somme in both 1916 and 1918. Essential sites include the village of Pozieres, scene of the most costly battle in Australia’s history, where 23,000 men were killed or wounded in six weeks. Nearby is Mouquet Farm, where the Australians and Germans fought a bloody action in August 1916. Also spend time exploring the British sites associated with the Battle of the Somme, including the massive 30-metre-deep Lochnagar Mine Crater, the Thiepval Memorial (where the names of 72,000 missing men are recorded) and the preserved trenches at the Newfoundland Memorial Park, Beaumont-Hamel. Our attention will then turn to the 1918 battles on the Somme, with a visit to Villers-Bretonneux, the town that was liberated by Australian troops on Anzac Day 1918. Here we will visit Victoria School (with its wonderful small Australian museum), Adelaide Cemetery (where Australia’s Unknown Soldier lay before being reinterred in Canberra in 1993) and the imposing Australian National Memorial, where the names of nearly 11,000 Australians with no known grave in France are recorded. We will also visit the site of the crash of the Red Baron in 1918, the scene of the great Australian victory at Hamel and the Australian 2nd Divisional Memorial at Mont St Quentin. We will also see the remains of trenches captured by the Australians in their victory here in September 1918. We will then return to Amiens where you will check in to your 4-star hotel.

DAY 2 THE SOMME TO YPRES

Today we will leave the Somme and drive north, passing through the Australian battlefields of 1917 and heading towards the town of Ypres, just across the Belgian border. Our first stop will be the battlefield of Bullecourt, where Australia lost more than 10,000 men in two bloody battles in April and May 1917. We will pay our respects to them at the Slouch Hat memorial in the centre of town and the Australian Memorial Park on the site of the German front line. Our next stop is the magnificent Canadian memorial at Vimy Ridge, where we will spend time wandering the maze of preserved trenches on the site. We then travel on to the very moving 1916 battlefield of Fromelles, where Australia lost 5533 men during its first action on the Western Front. Whilst here we will visit the Australian Memorial Park, VC Corner Cemetery (the only all-Australian cemetery in France) and see the site of the recently discovered Australian mass grave at Pheasant Wood. Crossing the Belgian border, we will visit the battlefield of Messines, where Australian and New Zealand troops played a vital role in a huge British attack in June 1917. We will arrive in the town of Ypres late in the afternoon, giving us time to check into our 4-star hotel and explore the town’s charming main square. This evening we will walk to the Menin Gate, where the names of 54,000 missing British and Commonwealth soldiers are recorded, for the moving Last Post ceremony. The Ypres fire brigade has performed this bugle ceremony every day and in all weather since the memorial opened in 1927. The only interruption was during the four years of German occupation during the Second World War — the ceremony recommenced on the day the town was liberated. (B)

DAY 3 THE YPRES SALIENT

The Ypres Salient was a bulge in the front line that curved around Ypres for most of the war. More than a million men were killed or wounded trying to gain control of this small patch of ground. Today we will explore the Australian battlefields in the Salient, places where the Anzacs made history in 1917. Our first stop is the impressive In Flanders Fields Museum, where a provocative collection of relics and displays chronicles the fighting in Flanders and the personal stories of the people involved. We will then visit the 5th Australian Division Memorial at Polygon Wood and see the graves of Private Hunter and Sergeant Calder, the two Australian soldiers who featured in Mat McLachlan's documentary Lost in Flanders. We then get a taste of the devastation caused by four years of continuous artillery fire at the cratered landscape of Hill 60, before visiting Tyne Cot, the world's largest Commonwealth war cemetery. Tyne Cot sits in the heart of one of the most horrific battlefields of the war — Passchendaele. Our final stop today is at the German Cemetery at Langemarck, where we will learn about the men on the other side of the line. In the late afternoon our guide will drive us back across the French border to the city of Lille, where you will be dropped at the train station for a connection back to Paris or London. (You also have the option of staying on in Ypres or Lille.) (B)

Note: This itinerary can also be reversed, operating from Lille to Amiens, an excellent option if you are catching the Eurostar to Europe from London.