KTS History

ETA between 10.30pm and 10.45pm.

Back in Blighty. Still on time!

Checked in, through passport control, and ready for the crossing home. The ferries are running to schedule, so we expect to be on time at school. We'll keep updating you (as will the students!).

Vimy offers an excellent opportunity to see inside a well-preserved trench system. Here, students look out from the German lines over to the British lines.

We're now heading for Calais.

The skies cleared over the Canadian National Vimy Memorial. It remembers the 66,000 Canadians who lost their lives in the First World War. The youngest was fifteen; barely older than the students on our trip.

Thank you to Tom, who makes the First World War history come alive for us. It is the tenth time he has guided KTS around the battlefields. The first time, Miss de Fraine was on the tour as a student. This year, she's back as a teacher!

Ciara read In Flanders Field, allowing us to remember Friday's visit to the dressing station where it was written. Elsie laid the wreath, with thoughts of her relative Joseph Prudhoe Thompson who fought and died in France. Lest we forget.

There was a break in the rain and birdsong, as we held our own, very special, Act of Remembrance. Daniel, Freddie, and Chris played the Reveille and the Last Post on their trumpets with great confidence and beautiful expression.

We have stopped at the soaring memorial to 63,000 missing British soldiers at Thiepval, which overlooks the beautiful landscape where one million men were slaughtered at the Battle of the Somme.

Vlamertinghe Military Cemetery in its early years.

Thank you to Finley and his family for allowing us to join them in remembering George Draper. The inscription recalls a "dear husband" and "father of six children." He died on 29 April 1917 and today, 107 years later, his great, great grandson visited him.

Good morning all... We have checked out of our hostel and are heading for the Somme this morning. We will stop first to visit the grave of Finley's great, great grandfather at Vlamertinghe Military Cemetery, just outside of Ypres.

Free time sunny Ypres (how much of the Belgian chocolate will make it home?) followed by dinner in a restaurant. We were lucky to get a good view of the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate and are now headed back to the hostel to enjoy the rest of a sunny evening.

At Langemark, where 44,000 Germans are laid to rest in a cramped space, a poignant contrast to the British and Commonwealth war graves we have visited. We will remember them.

Welly time. Walking through the original support trench, just behind the front line, at Sanctuary Wood.

Battlefields 2024. It's tradition for KTS to take a group photo at this British machine gun post on Hill 60. This is our tenth visit.

The crater created by an Australian mine at the Caterpillar Hill, one of 19 exploded at 3.20am on 7 June 1917.

A beautiful morning here on "Hill 60" above Ypres, so it's hard to imagine that we're standing on land hard fought over throughout WW1. The lines of the trenches are horrifyingly close together. Tom, our guide, has just told us that his uncle was injured here.

The view from here; a beautiful sunny evening at the Hotel Oude Abdij. We're all still up and going, despite the 1.30,am start.