Bucket List: Do a tour of duty
Plan a visit to historic wartime France and prepare to be moved, in more ways than one
‘It could be your perfect intro to riding overseas’
If you’re making plans for later this year and are conscious of the fact that you’ve not done much touring in the past 12 months, it can be a struggle to think of how to ease yourself back in. Likewise, if you’ve never ridden abroad before and now have a yearning to do that first ‘Continental tour’, you might also be naturally anxious about straying too far or about taking on too much of ‘the unknown’ too soon.
Well, luckily, there’s one type of tour which ticks all those boxes: it’s geographically convenient, can be done over a weekend, involves a ‘treasure hunt’ of destinations, can be ridden as an organised package tour, and also has significant cultural and historic interest – a world war battlefield tour. Northern France and Belgium, particularly the areas within a day’s ride of the channel ports and Eurotunnel, are peppered with not just memorials and monuments to WW1 and WW2 but also astonishing remnants and museums from this most significant period of modern British history. The France/Belgium border area, just an hour or so from Calais, is where the bulk of WW1 was fought and holds innumerable, enormous and incredibly moving war cemeteries, monuments and museums. The Menin Gate in Ypres, where The Last Post is played every day at 8pm, is alone worthy of any Bucket List. Sanctuary Wood to the south-east retains one of the last surviving trench complexes. While Thiepval, Passchendale, Vimy Ridge and more are nearby.
Further south west, the Normandy Beaches between Carentan and Deauville, all handily accessible via channel ferries to St Malo, Cherbourg, Oustreham and Le Havre, are a surviving testament to the enormity of WW2’s D-Day with so much military history you almost trip over it. The vast US cemetery near Omaha Beach at Colleville, as featured at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, is another must-visit. So, too, is the Mulberry Harbour and museum at Arromanches, the impressive remnants of the German batteries at Longues-sur-Mer and the Pegasus memorial just south of Oustreham where British glider troops famously and heroically captured the bridge. These, and many more, are barely 50 miles apart – all of which makes visiting them the perfect excuse for a brief, possibly introductory tour by bike. The distance between the two war zones isn’t so big – around 200 miles or half a day’s ride – that you can’t do both on one tour but we’d recommend separating them and spending a weekend or so exploring each. Plus, that way, if one’s a success, you’ve another to look forward to later.
The WW1 sites are the nearest. If you use the Eurotunnel (around £70 return per bike), Ypres is
just 45 minutes away, Arras an hour further and both are worth overnight stays with masses of militaria in-between. Admittedly, this being fairly bland northern France and Belgium, the topography isn’t exactly dramatic and the roads are at best pleasant rather than spectacular but for an introductory tour they’re more than enough: fuel stations, hotels and eateries are commonplace, roads are well-surfaced and give loads of options. Being a tourist area, locals are generally friendly and helpful and the atmosphere throughout is solemnly moving. If you’re feeling slightly more adventurous head to Normandy. For this, we’d recommend using overnight ferries and doing a circuit via Portsmouth and the likes of St Malo and Le Havre. Admittedly, this is more expensive, especially with a cabin (reckon on £250-£300 return) but you save two nights of hotels, avoid wasting daylight, and it somehow makes it seem more of a ‘holiday’. It also gives you the chance to pop into other tourist spots such as Mont St Michel and Honfleur. Again, the riding and roads are easy, undemanding, occasionally beautiful and peppered with amenities. Either can easily be done by yourself, with a group of friends or you can simply book a place on an organised tour. And if you haven’t already done one but always wanted to ride aboard – just do it. After the year we’ve just had it could be the tonic you need!