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This course is based on the valley of Somme, a gentle rolling region of chalk hills with wooded hilltops, not unlike the South Downs, which lies between the deep set valleys of the Ancre and the Somme in Picardy. It was here on 1st July 1916 that the British Army suffered their worst ever day with almost 60,000 casualties.
Today this is a quiet rural backwater but the numerous cemeteries and the words of writers such as Blunden, Graves, Owen and Sassoon all bear witness to the unremitting ferocity which affected all who took part in the five month battle whilst more recently Sebastian Faulks set his best-selling ‘Birdsong’ in this landscape.
This course will seek to create images which match those words and especially to match the vision of one veteran who wrote
"I saw that bare country before me...the miles and miles of torn earth, the barbed wire, the litter, the dead trees. But the country would come back to life, the grass would grow again, the wild flowers return, and trees where now there were only splintered skeleton stumps.
They would lie still and at peace below the singing larks, beside the serenely flowing rivers.
They could not feel lonely, they would have one another. And they would have us also, though we were going home and leaving them behind. We belonged to them, and they would be a part of us for ever."
Today the river Ancre does indeed flow serenely through it’s mist filled valley, a far cry from the horror filled landscape which Tolkien used as his inspiration for the Dead Marshes in 'Lord of the Rings'.
This landscape is one filled with emotion and it is this which makes this one of Battlefield Vision's most especial tours. To enable us to capture the early morning light, this tour is based on a bed and breakfast establishment right in the heart of the battlefield and evening meals will be taken both there and in local towns.
Day 1 - Travel to the Somme and via Arras with time to visit the city centre with its fabulous Grand Place. Dinner in the evening with an introductory talk about the battle of the Somme and the landscape in which it was fought.
Day 2 to 4 - All three days will be spent out on the Somme battlefield. It is almost certain that a member of the party will have an ancestor who fought here so we will try and visit any places with especial associations.
Day 5 If the weather allows, an early morning start to enable us to visit any of a number of battlefields which lie on our route back to England - these could include Vimy Ridge, Loos or even the Agincourt where Henry V won his fame. And then home to England.
For more information about these tours please visit www.landscapephotographycourses.com |
