Year 8 trip to Ypres

Recently Year 8 went on their annual trip to Ypres to visit the World War One war graves.

We left school at midnight on the 10th May heading down to Dove to catch the 4:30am ferry over to France and then from there we drove to Ypres arriving at our first site about 8am.

First Stop
Essex Farm Cemetery

Essex farm is a relatively small cemetery which has the grave of Private Strudwick as one of its memorials. Strudwick was only 15 when he died serving in the war.

Second stop
Langemarck Cemetery

Langemarck is the Germa cemetery in Ypres. It features a huge number of graves, many of which are unmarked, and has a noticeably darker feel to it than the British cemeteries which are lighter and more airy in feel.

Third stop
Hill 62 and Sanctuary Wood

Sanctuary Wood is an area of British Trench which you can walk around along with an attached museum full of lots of weird and wonderful artefacts from the war which are fascinating to look at.

Fourth stop
Ypres Centre, Menin Gate, The Cloth Hall Museum and the Chocolate shop

Ypres is a beautiful city. Whilst there we got the time to do several things. First we looked at Menin gate which is a memorial to thousands of missing soldiers from the area. For our interests two of the men named above came from Aylsham FJ Barrett and R Body. We also got to visit the huge Cloth Hall museum which is full of so many interesting things as well as having the opportunity to visit the chocolate shop opposite to stock up on the Belgian chocolates.

Final stop
Tyne Cot Cemetery

We ended our trip to Ypres at Tyne Cot cemetery which is a massive along with a huge memorial to missing soldiers.

We then headed had to France to return our journey back to England.