Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of Beat to Battlefield. This week I'm out on the battlefield of the Somme, a place that I've trekked many times, and every time you find something completely new. But I do this every year. In April, I come over to the Somme with no one to guide, with no real plan, and I just wander around the battlefields. Something which, having been a battlefield tour guide for 20 odd years, the Somme was the first place it started nearly 30 years ago. Back in the summer of 1996, I came over here on a day trip, and from then I was absolutely hooked. But with any of these battlefield sites, no matter how often you come to them, you always find something new to see, and there's always someone new to meet, and I have a little network of a little family all over this part of Europe. There are people that you may not see for years, but when you walk through those doors, it's like you've never left. So we've been to Luz, a forgotten battlefield, and I'd like to mention here: if you get a chance and you are into your podcasts of military history, please listen to the Old Front Line. It's done by a good friend of mine, Paul Reed, who was actually inspiration for me to do these podcasts. During Covid, it was the longest time that I hadn't been out to the Western Front, and you get the itch. But Paul, he is the premier battlefield guide, an amazing historian with a wealth of knowledge, which, as we all say, we're no experts in the first world war, and the page of the first world war has never ended, will never end in our lifetimes at all. But I actually managed to meet Paul as he would say, those crisscross paths of the First World War. I was sat at the cafe at Notre Dame de Lorette, and he popped through the door and we shared a cup of coffee, and then we went our separate ways. But please listen to the old front line. There's a link in the show notes, and it's an amazing podcast. There's also a link in the show notes to the place I'm staying at the moment. This is the Roulette d'Encre, and I know that Regis and Regine are fans of the podcast, and hopefully they're they'll enjoy listening to this. But this particular place I found completely by mistake. I was travelling over to the battlefield, so I needed a place within the actual fields, as all the uh guarding I do I do by foot or public transport. And the Somme is such a wide, vast area, it always helps to have some sort of base within the battlefield itself. And I'd booked an Airbnb, which transpires it was completely bogus. So on my way over there, I managed to find another Airbnb, and I found this wonderful place, and it's one of the best mis best surprises I've ever had. So, located just outside the village of Menselmartensaw, in the build-up to the First World War, sorry, build up to the first war, but to the build-up to the Somme, this was behind the lines. It wasn't out of range of German guns, but it's one of those main towns where the build-up was. And in 2006, when I was doing my First World Living History, we used Mensh Martinsar as a base, and we we stayed on the little village green slash football pitch, slash uh Patonk pitch, and we lived there for a week, and I never realised that I'd ever come back to this, and I almost felt like one of those veterans returning when I stayed in this village and I saw that field where we stayed on for a week. And just up the road from that actual field is the old train station. There used to be a small passenger line, and I think it was more for agricultural use or moving uh products over the battlefields. But there used to be a trait or railway line over the battlefield, and that sadly, a bit like the UK, it would in the 1950s and 1960s, they slowly start to fizzle out. But where the old train station is, travellers, roamers, settled in this area. After the First World War, they would come to the battlefields to try and help rebuild the infrastructure and start up businesses. And of course, the large amount of scrap metal would also help as well. But Regine wanted a project during Covid, and he spoke to one of the locals who lives in where that train station once was, and he found the base of a gypsy caravan, which he took back to his house, and now has built a self-contained, almost like an apartment, a caravan, a static caravan that you can stay on in the battlefield. It's big enough for one person or even a couple, and it's all self-reliance. You've got your kitchen, you've got a fully fitted bathroom, Wi-Fi, and then one of the most comfortable beds known to mankind, and of an evening you sit there and look over the farmers' fields, and you're there in the silence. I've never I've never known a place so pitch black in all my life, but it's a wonderful place to stay on the battlefield. And Regis and Regine can't do enough for you, and it is a I can't recommend to high enough. If you're visiting the battlefields either on the car or if you want to do it by foot like I do, there's trains that go from Lille all the way into Albert, and Regine and Regine will pick you up from the train station, and then you're there in the centre of the battlefield. The village Mansor Martinsar still has some history. Just you can actually see it from the caravan. We have a Commonwealth Wargrave Cemetery attached to the civil cemetery, and that is Mental Communal Extension Cemetery. And I always make a point of visiting it there, and there's about just over 120 graves there, but it's when you've got time to sit, you can really read cemeteries, and some people once you visit a couple of Commonwealth War Graves cemeteries, you really get an idea of the layout and how they built up after the war. There are some of the original burials there. There's also a couple of special monuments to cemeteries that were lost. There's actually four or five men who were found at the train station and buried there at the time, where the caravan you came that you stay in came from. There's also some special monuments to cemeteries that were lost over the battlefields. As we walk up the high street, and as Regine will tell you, you have the church. Now, prior to the outbreak of the First World War, most of the churches were made of the chalk and limestone that you find in the local area, but of course would be destroyed by war and then rebuilt in the red brick that we see today. But during the First World War, a soldier took the hand off the clock that was there, and many years later would return them. Just opposite the the church, the Laguise, you've got the Marie, and outside the Marie is a memorial to a platoon of men who would die just before the Battle of the Somme on the first of July 1916. On the twenty eighth of June, the thirteenth battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles were killed in Munzel Martinsar by a German shell. Members of Levin Platoon of Sea Company, twenty three men would be killed by that one shell. And they're remembered on a special memorial on the side of the Marie, and they're buried in several cemeteries around the local area. If you walk up the steps and look through the windows, you can see a tiny little private museum that the town has put together of relics of the First World War and all those veterans who returned on their pilgrimages in the post-war period. And right above the fireplace we have those clock hands that were returned by that soldier. And they made part of the village war memorial, but the main village war memorial is just behind you, opposite on the green there. An amazing little bit of history that you can find in this area. You're then there are three main roads going out of the sem of this semi of this town. You can go straight up across the hill, and eventually you'll come to Newfoundland Park at Beaumont Hamel, where you can walk the field, and one of the best well-preserved battlefields in the area, and there'll be a podcast about that very shortly. Or you can go to the right out of the village and you'll end up in the Ancre Valley, coming into Avalouy Wood, where you can visit the Avalouy Wood Cemetery, or Lancashire Dump, as it was once known. Turn left, walk along the Ancre, and then you can go to Encre, the Encre Cemetery, or up the hill to the Ulster Tower, where you can get an amazing tour of the woods at the Ulster Tower at Teatval Wood. You must pre-book it, or you can walk up to the Tynecop Memorial, not the Tynecopt Memorial, I do get my memorials mixed up. The Tiatval Memorial, the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, 72,000 names. Walk through the Leipzig Redoubt, where many of those men would die on their way up. Walk through the village of At Otwee, Lonsdale Cemetery, and that's a nice circular route if you're really into your walking across the battlefields. And I can't stress this enough. If you get a chance to walk the battlefield driven cycle, you see far more than you do in a car or in a coach, and you can take your time with it. And of course, you've got Tietval and Ulster Tower, you can stop off, have a cup of coffee, and have a nice little break on your tour. If you turn left out of the village, you can walk across the fields and you'll come to Knightsbridge Cemetery that looks over Balmont Hamel. Carry on up the farmer's path and you'll come to two observation posts, which are still in the field from the 1st of July, and wander yourself into the village of Ocean Villiers, where you can go to Avril's tea room. And as my dad always says, it's the best bacon sausage roll that he's had on the battlefields. Then walk down to Hawthorne Ridge, up the sunken lane, and if you really want to push yourself, you can walk all the way to Sayre. You're right in the heart of the battlefield here, and there are so many walks you can do. And if you are to Regine really nicely, he can even drop you off somewhere in the battlefield and pick you up. But what I tend to do is get dropped off a nice fair fire point and walk my way back. What I will say is please, if you do stay with Reggie and Regine, come and have a chat with them, have a drink with them in the evening, and I bet you'll become part of their little British family or English speaking family. Or if we have got any for if we have got anyone else who doesn't speak English on this uh on this podcast, it's um it's an amazing place to go and stay. So this is a little bonus episode to say thank you to Reggie and Regine who for the past three years have looked after me on my battlefield pilgrimages.