Those who have read Birdsong by Sebastian Faulkes will have learned of miners being used in WWI. I certainly knew nothing of this activity until I read that book. The miners’ job was to dig tunnels several metres below ground…

Our journey back up through France, deftly avoiding a return through Belgium by crossing the Rhine at Saarbrucken, has led us along much of the 1914-18 western front. We moved on from Verdun, which was largely a French and American…

I must be making up for lost time. Having arrived at Albert, a centre for the bloody and senseless Battle of the Somme, yesterday, we needed supplies. It’s only a 10-minute walk from the camping municipal site to a super-U…

It’s difficult to come to this neck of the woods without becoming involved in the WWI obscenity that was the battle of Verdun. We are camped a few kilometres south of Verdun but the main military action was centred just…

What a difference a border makes. Our first full day back in France and we needed some shopping so we zoomed about 8kms down the road to a slightly larger town with a supermarché – not one that we’d heard…

This, we hope, will be our last full day in Germany. Tomorrow we head over the border into France. We are on the so-called Weinstraβe, which was established in 1935 as another marketing ploy, this time to boost local wine…

After our first day disrupted journey around Lille, our journey east through Germany to visit our friends near Altenburg was pretty much unhindered, save for an exit that Sally Satnav wanted us to take but which was inconsiderately gesperrt [closed].…

… I embarked upon a school cycling trip through Germany beginning at Dinkelsbühl. I can remember nothing about the town but its cute name and the fact that we were staying in Jugendherberge [youth hostels]. Our holiday turned out to…

We’re at a pleasantly quiet, rural site at Hohenstadt whose main purpose was to hide us from the swell of weekend campers. It’s just to the east of Nürnberg. We were a little concerned that the site was billed as…

I really have no recollections of how camping in Germany was when we last tried it about 30 years ago. Our first experience on this occasion with the genial Herr Wolf was a delight: hedged marked pitches of about 10m2,…