Guédelon is a 13th century castle under construction from scratch using only medieval tools, materials and techniques. It is a fascinating project in experimental archaeology that began in 1995 – a quarter century ago! Construction began two years later* in a former quarry in the middle of...
The Musée de l’Armée (Army Museum) is located in the Hôtel National des Invalides (The National Residence of the Invalids), a collection of 17th century buildings in the centre of Paris that started life as a military hospital. Part of the complex is still used as a...
The Museum of the Atlantic Wall, aka ‘Batterie Todt’, is all about the big guns! Not only was the giant concrete casement built specifically to accommodate a massive gun, it now has one of the two remaining German K5 railway guns parked alongside as a major exhibit....
Montormel*, or ‘Hill 262’ as it was known to the Allies, was the location where the ‘Falaise pocket’ was finally sealed by Polish and Canadian forces on 21 August 1944, trapping up to 50,000 German soldiers and marking the end of the Battle of Normandy. On this...
The medieval hilltop town of Thiers in the Puy-de-Dôme department of Auvergne*, is known throughout the commercial and domestic kitchens of France as the historic home of the cutlery industry. In particular it’s known for its knives. The town’s craftsmen (& women) have been making knives for...
This [Gen. Richter's HQ] is where the Third Reich first realised what was happening on 5/6th June 1944
On a coastline dotted with D-Day museums, it’s easy to assume that the America Gold Beach Museum in Ver-sur-Mer, Normandy, is dedicated to the events on June 6 1944… but it isn’t, exclusively. Musée America Gold Beach reminds us that before the British Army’s XXX Corps landed...
The Canadian National Vimy Memorial in dramatic white stone dominates the surrounding landscape from the top of Vimy Ridge. It marks the battlefield on which four divisions of Canadians* managed to dislodge three German divisions from their entrenched and fortified positions on the ridge over three days...
Memorial 14-18 is not one, but three sites on, and next to, the dramatic Notre-Dame-de-Lorette hill just southwest of the town of Lens in the Pas-de-Calais region of northern France… The National Necropolis of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette is the largest French military cemetery with the remains of over 42,000...
I came across this statue of French aviator, Hubert Latham, a couple of days ago on the French coast just outside Sangatte. He’s an interesting guy and so nearly was the first pilot to fly across the English Channel. He was certainly the first to try! Latham...
The Juno Beach Centre is different to many of the other museums & memorials on the Normandy coast in that its focus is not so much on ‘what happened here?’, as ‘how and why were the Canadians here?’. “The goal is not to be too technical,” says...
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) opened its new ‘behind the scenes’ visitor centre last week in northern France. Most people are aware of the CWGC, particularly when they visit a CWGC cemetery or memorial, but they are perhaps not aware of what the CWGC does or...
Airbus is celebrating its 50th anniversary today at its headquarters in Toulouse, France. The European aircraft manufacturer was formed when the original Airbus partnership agreement was signed at the Paris air show on 29 May 1969, and the company is celebrating with a flypast of Airbus aircraft...
The biggest surprise about the German military cemetery at La Cambe is its size – it is small (16.5 acres), given that 21,222 German soldiers are buried here. That’s much smaller than the American Cemetery at Colville (172.5 acres), which has 9,380 graves. The reason is that,...
This is a niche blog about technically-minded travel. It reflects my own interests in the mechanical, technical, historical, engineering, transport and military world.
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