A bespoke tour can simply extend the itinerary of a General Tour to explore an area or series of events in greater detail. At its most complex, there is the ability to match a tour to exact requirements with a concise and thoroughly researched itinerary.

 

Perhaps the most exciting bespoke tours are those following family history. Such a tour needs to be planned well in advance, giving time to research at the National Archives for the original battalion or unit records and information from surviving personal service records. Skylark’s extensive library of official histories, trench mapping and databases will provide you with a portfolio of information. Often it is possible to place a group within a few metres of the original location; sometimes, exactly in the original location!

A surprise 70th Birthday present placed one individual with his family on the very spot where his father won the Military Cross.

The tour even extended to finding the young officer’s trench in the local reserve area, amazingly still well preserved to a depth of 2 metres.

 

A very moving event was simply locating his billet above a little Estaminet in the rest area.

The best way to illustrate this is by example:

 

Joe had always listened to his father’s stories of going ‘over the top’ with the Sheffield City Battalion on July 1st 1916 at Serre on the Somme. The front line is preserved and no words can describe his feelings as he sat quietly in the remains of the original front line trench.

“Yesterday we just sat and talked nearly all day. We could not get the trip out of our minds, and certainly it will remain with us for the rest of our lives.”

“Excellent Andrew, I am really pleased that you were able to discover so much in such short time. Not a day goes by that I don’t regret not having pressed my own father for more details of his father’s life and war experience.”

Creating a Bespoke Tour

 

The possibilities of having a complete tour personally arranged for you is limitless.

 

You may wish to travel with friends or family, perhaps organise a tour for a larger group with special interests.

 

Visiting from overseas? This is the perfect opportunity to explore the battlefields with a tour flexible enough to match your own travel arrangements.

 

All bespoke tours are created on demand and do not run on an annual schedule.

This style of expertise and in-depth knowledge places Skylark above many other small group tour companies purporting to do the same.

A tour can be arranged just for you and your family or you may wish to join with others doing similar. A shared interest tour is then limited to the same area of operations to maximise the contact time with your personal itinerary. The combined interest works very well, with people sharing the excitement and support given to one another when approaching a particular site or family grave.

Debris found in the bunker (below left) and the entrance to a dug out (below) complete with timber revetting and telephone cables

Discovering previously unknown members of a family revealed by pre-tour research

Using an original trench periscope (right) to gain a real view over ‘no man’s land’.

Following an young infantry officer on the Somme revealed an amazing wealth of previously unseen family history material.

 

A letter from his Headmaster providing a reference for officer training, medical evidence of a bullet wound to the knee and a letter complaining to the War Office of having to buy his own crutches!

Occasionally a soldier has no known grave and his name is inscribed on a memorial to the missing. On a bespoke tour that is never the end of the story, research will place us on the location of his unit at the time of death. A name on such a memorial at Thiepval took us to a field near Gueudecourt and the location of Bayonet Trench. Words simply cannot match the emotion and tears expressed by one couple when placing a poppy cross in a foreign field.

“….And where now at last he sleeps

More sound in France -

That, too he secret keeps.” Edward Thomas