Tag: https://gtitravel.ie/

Countries, Europe

Lest we forget war is no game

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On this Remembrance Day lest we forget war is no game and nothing at all like SAS Rogue Heroes.

Yes, lazy national stereotypes were de rigueur but the Paddies and Jocks of the trenches were miles removed from the SAS action men of the BBC series.

Most Tommies were only worried about keeping life and limb in the mud and blood of the Flanders and French earth.

And ensure that if they should meet their fate on some foreign field that their feet mark them out as for ever English…

Or Scottish or Welsh or Irish.

A soldier’s feet

The numbers on the soles of their feet identifying them.

On the occasion that they get blown to smithereens.

And the only way of verifying who they were was by their numbers.

And all so the bereaved can get their widows’ pension.

A trail of blood

My heroic Great-Uncle: At his grave in Ieper

The boots and their books, if they could be found, would be loaded on to the back of a truck.

Still dripping with blood and seeping out the back door.

Hard to read, and to hear, but on this Remembrance Day it is worth taking our two minutes’ silence to reflect on that.

And what the red poppy symbolises… that everything died in No Man’s Land apart from the flower.

The last post

Historic year: For Ireland and the UK in France

All of which you can discover for yourself from the experts at Ireland’s GTI Travel, the Group Specialists.

On their battlefield trip experiences which could reveal who you really are and your family’s place in history.

And where I said my clan’s farewell to my own Great-Uncle Willie in Ieper.

The first of us to see him since he fell fighting for who knows what?

That Britain might keep its promise and give Ireland its freedom.

Or because an elder brother was worried about the group he was associating with at home.

A family history

Every one a hero: Ieper

There are a million reasons and a million stories of why Tommies went to war.

And they are our stories which the Commonwealth Graves Commission will help you unearth.

And guide you to where your loved one rests for eternity.

A white cross amid a sea of like crosses marking out that they would not grow old as we that are left grow old.

So however we remember them today…

Whether at our war memorial in our villages, towns, cities.

Or laying the wreath, as some of us have been fortunate enough to do, at the Menin Gate, and hear the Last Post.

Lest we forget war is no game.

 

Countries, Culture, Europe, Ireland

Holiday Snaps – An Irish solution

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It’s an Irish solution to an Irish problem as they like to say over there but even this one has never been tried before… shared leaders.

The Irish have taken four months to agree that they can’t agree but, and you have to get into the Irish way of thinking, that’s no bad thing.

So Micheál Martin will get the first two and a half years as Taoiseach while his predecessor Leo Varadkar wiil resume power for the last two and a half.

But not down and out

For those of you who think that that long without a new government is careless should look to Belgium https://visitbelgium.com and Northern Ireland www.discovernorthernireland.com.

And this is a flick of how these countries run In Flanders fields, Belfast Chilled and Belfast’s rich tapestry.

And talking about shared leaders just think of the fun and possibilities if Donald Trump split the next Presidency with Joe Biden www.washington.org and Easy DC.

Or Boris Johnson and Sir Keir Starmer… www.visitlondon.com The London life.

While this is how I saw Ireland in…

Swiss Miss

Running woman: Sara Roloff

I make no apologies in dedicating this next Snap to the force of nature that is Sara Roloff.

Sara brought us Swiss bingo, Swiss wine and beer and much more besides in my time in Ireland.

And champion skier and Marathon runner that she is she was always the fittest person in any room.

Alas, Sara was struck down with COVID-19 93 days ago and only started her recovery 43 days ago.

But last week she got the all-clear from her cardiologist and guess what she’s planning a marathon.

That’s what the Swiss are like Swhisskey on the rocks and www.myswitzerland.com. You have to go.

And me? I’ll take the gondola.

Home Department

Now here’s a walk

This lockdown has reminded us all that we should appreciate our own country.

And Travel Department, who know all about the world, know too that Ireland is the best of the world.

Which is why they’re launching Homegrown, their domestic trips from September.

My first professional Travel trip was from Wales to Cork and Kerry on the now discontinued Swansea-Cork shipping route.

It was the poor young PR’s first trip and she wasn’t prepared for how rough it would be with half a dozen hacks.

And look at that landscape

Or how choppy the sea was as we all fell down with sea sickness.

The return journey was almost as bad with us being kept off shore for a couple of hours.

I learned two things… that without our holiday providers and hosts we are rudderless and that Co. Kerry is one of the most beautiful places on God’s Earth.

TD has a guided four-night Kingdom of Kerry walking trip and a seven-night guided seven-night Kingdom and Cork’s Rebel County itinerary.

Check out https://www.tdactiveholidays.com/ireland-adventure-holidays.

And you must know by now how much I love an oul’ walk… www.CaminoWays.com, A pilgrim’s prayer and www.FrancigenaWays.com and Small roads lead to Rome.

The Special Relationship

I’ve often felt that we’d be better off if we put broadminded Travel people in charge of the world.

Rather than the leaders we have.

And I wholeheartedly support the US Travel Association’s response to the European Union further shutting its doors on Americans.

Tori Enerson Barnes: ‘This is unwelcome news and will have major negative implications for an economic recovery. – particularly if this ban results in cycles of retaliation as is so often the case.’

What would our forefathers who fought side by side in two World Wars have made of this disintegration of a once unshakable friendship… In Flanders fields, https://gtitravel.ie and www.visitusa.ie and www.visitusa.com.

Africa, America, Asia, Canada, Caribbean, Countries, Culture, Europe, Ireland, Oceania, UK

VE Day – The unknown soldiers

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They make easy targets for class warriors but on days of military commemoration, like today VE Day, the British Royal Family are entitled to raise their heads high.

Prince Philip was first lieutenant (second-in-command) on board the HMS Wallace during the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1942.

When the Luftwafffe began their bombardment of the waters.

 

Another war… but the same sacrifice

Yeoman Harry Hargreaves revealed back in 2003 how Philip duped the enemy and saved the ship and all on it.

By persuading his captain to drop a raft overboard, set it alight, and deceive them into bombing that instead.

And so as Prince Charles, whose own military career is distinguished, laid a wreath today at Balmoral to the Fallen, and the Queen spoke to the Nation…

It is well to remember that we wer all in the same fight in World War II. And now.

 

My Great-Uncle Willie

What we all do after we get out of this we’ll have to wait and see, and there will be a clamour for sun and sand.

My friends in the Caribbean take note.

While some will seek remote holidays, others adventure, while still others walking holidays.

And all are on my list.

But I will, as I’ve always done, continue to visit the places and commemorate those who fell in war around the world.

 

Cavernous destruction… in Flanders

Like I did when I was invited to lay the wreath at the daily Last Post commemoration at the Menin Gate in Ieper (Ypres).

Where my Great Uncle Willie lies in a graveyard of identically-sized crosses (no hierarchy in death).

And where I was the first of his relatives to see him, plant a wooden cross and say The Lord’s Prayer.

His brother Patrick has his name inscribed among the tens of thousands of missing on the arch at Thiepval.

 

Everyone a hero: Great-Uncle Pat and the Missing at Thiepval

I have been fortunate enough to trot the globe but I have never felt as moved.

Or deeply grateful than when I knelt before Great Uncle Willie’s grave.

And though I never knew him, or those he fought with or against, I commend them and those who care for their last resting places.

And not just today but every day of every year.

 

Trench warfare: At The Somme

I visited the World War I battlefields, Ieper and The Somme with GTI, the Group Travel Specialists https://gtitravel.ie and In Flanders fields.

And also visit www.visitflanders.com and https://www.visit-somme.com/great-war