Save a hotel ..and money

You can now save up to 35% on a hotel booking through a scheme to help the sector survive the Covid-19 pandemic.

Around 100 hotels are taking part in the Sleep Over To Help Turnover scheme run by industry association HOSPA.

The offers include 35% off a booking at Apex Hotels, 25% off two-night stays in Bespoke Hotels, plus free upgrades, bottles of fizz and discounted meals. hospa.org

Visit the battlefields in Belgium which saw the fiercest fighting of the First World War, following the lines of advance and on to the Messines Ridge where 19 mines were detonated beneath the German position.

Hill 60, a man-made rise on a flat landscape, still stands as a memorial site to the soldiers whose bodies were never recovered. On the memorial to the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company, look out for the bullet holes as the area was fought over again during the Second World War.

You’ll visit the preserved craters at St Eloi and Spanbroekmoelen, created by mines during the Battle of Messines in 1917, and visit The Messines Ridge Cemetery, the final resting place of 1,534 soldiers, of which only 577 could be identified.

At the Memorial Museum at Passchendaele, you can follow the battle via images, film and artefacts. There’s a realistic reconstruction of a trench from 1917 with communication equipment, workplaces and dormitories.

From there, you’ll travel the route of Pilckem Ridge and pass the point where the late Harry Patch – the last surviving combat soldier of WW1, who died in 2009 aged 111 – served during the battle in the summer of 1917.