Pilgrimages by car
If motorcycling isn't your thing
A pilgrimage by car can be entertaining. We've previously run a tour with three cars and where the dialogue enroute was achieved by creating a conference telephone call on the car hand free systems.
If you have an appetite for driving on the wrong side of the road, then we can arrange a pilgrimage for you.
We can ether join you in the car or meet you at different sites.
If your preference is to go it alone then let us help you create a memorable trip with an itinerary.
Better still, our self-guided tours include a file which you may open on a mobile device to narrate different sites on the way.
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Tours in 2023
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Your Cicerone
My first tour the battlefields of WW1 and WW2 I was a child. John (my father) would hop on his motorbike and I'd hop on the back. Derrie Boots and a Bell open-face helmet...you know the score.
Since we lived about an hour from Dover, a Friday crossing on the old Sealink ferry would have us scooting about Calais for a B&B for a few francs.
And so before I was 18, I'd toured most of the main WW1 and WW2 sites from the west coast of France to Arnhem.
In fact my GCE (yes, remember those?) for Geography included seven KODAK photographs taped together to make a panoramic shot of the Mulberry Harbour.
Thankfully, my passion for history was not erased by a business career and for the last twenty years I've responded to an increasing number of requests to research individuals and follow-up with a pilgrimage.
"Andy you know so much"...I've heard people say. Alas, this is wrong. I just know where to look for research, I know how to put that research together, I know how to present the case and I know my way around some of the Western Front.
But I remain a humble student of history. If I were to say that I know 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% that happened in the Western Front in the Great War, I'd be exaggerating.
In 1986 I joined a law firm in London and, in the pre-internet age, I was taught 'old-skool' to research facts in libraries and how to present those facts.
These hard-won skills are used to present facts on pilgrimages. I make no secret that my favourite trips are when we lay breadcrumbs as we follow in the footsteps of the relative of one of our guests.
I joke that it's like 'Surprise Surprise' meets 'Who do you think you are?'.
With a motorcycle background going back to a brief and unsuccessful stint in Kent Schoolboy Scramble Club, I then moved to riding bikes on the road since I turned 16.
Now middle-aged, 6'4" and with a waistline which is expanding at an alarming rate, I meet enough of the stereotypes to ride a R1250GSA. Yes, I'd like to ride something a bit more cool but I think to ride something cool, you first have to be cool.
So I think I'll have to stick with the GS.....enough said ('LOL').
But the GS does the job in its own agricultural way and plus it does it without making my back (or my backside) ache.
Amongst my life memberships I have the privilege to say that I am associated with the Talbot House, the Last Post Association and the Somme Association. The Western Front Association is a very good membership if you are considering it and as a Trustee of the Hampshire Archives Trust, I ask you to visit that site from the links panel above and support us.
My badge number is 991 of the International Guild of Battlefield Guides. This is yet to be made up to full 'badged status' but this is (as of 2023) work in progress.
In late 2023, I shall also be starting a battlefield guiding course created by Dudley Giles and Steve Smith because every day is a school day.
There are some very interesting historians engaged with the WW1 topic. I do not hold myself to be an expert but my education touring the battlefields by motorbike began as a child (that was a long time ago) and my professional life has given me certain fact-based skills to place me in a position which, if the testimonials are to be believed, has been well received.
As I have yet to retire from working in the legal world, I do not make a charge for my tours. This will change one day but, for now at least, I ask my guests to make a donation to Talbot House, the Last Post Association and the Somme Association if, at the end of the pilgrimage, they feel so inclined.
In this way, I can in my own small way help support the work of those charities so that, at the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.
Andy
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