Having taken the decision to embark on this tour, I had to decide on exactly how it should be undertaken.
Naturally the easiest solution would be to take an organised tour with one of the many Battlefield Touring companies operating in both areas. Although I am not a fan of organised tours I searched these companies on the internet to see what they offered. Some were pretty impressive, others less so - in general I felt that for my purpose they were inadequate - you know "been there, done that"
Being an avid follower of the European theatre of World War II I already had a good general knowledge of the events and their chronology so why not create my own tour. This of course would require a lot more time and effort on my side - time I have and why not put the effort into something that I find fascinating.
In passing I discussed this with my good friend Geoff Dusheiko who lives in London. Shortly thereafter a book arrived in the post from him called D-Day The Battle for Normandy authored by Antony Beevor, a well known historian. Beevor is a master of the art of writing history like a novel, absolutely enthralling and superbly informative. This really got me going on my researches on Normandy and the Ardennes.
Having established a good knowledge on both battle areas I reckoned that at least a week was needed both in Normandy and Belgium to see and comprehend the history. a good time to take the tour is in June as the weather should be good and it is before the European schools take their summer vacations.
Considering the relatively small geographical areas in which the conflicts took place I decided to locate our base centrally. I selected Bayeux in Normandy and Malmedy in Begium, both being small towns and having easy access to feeder roads. I booked our accomodation on the internet through Bookings.com which seems to work very well.
Our trip itinery will be as follows:
13th June we depart from Tel Aviv to Brussels, collect a rental car and travel 90 minutes to the ancient city of Brugge where we will stay at a castle (got great rates) on the outskirts of the town.
16th June we drive from Brugge via Dunkirk to Bayeux in Normandy
24th June travel from Bayeux to Mamedy
2nd July we will leave for Brussels and spend the weekend with Geoff and Pam Dusheiko and will return to Israel on the 4th July
In my next posting I will explain how I went about planning the itineries for Normandy utilising and combining resources from the internet, biographies, DVD documentaries and Google Map.
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