The Somme Battlefields: A Day Trip From Amiens

At first glance, the countryside northeast of Amiens looks like great parts of rural France.

Its fields stretch out toward the horizon, dotted with small villages that cluster around church towers. Small roads border the fields, with slow tractors inching their way forward.

There's nothing to suggest this landscape was once the scene of one of the deadliest battles in modern history.

Yet a short drive through the Somme uncovers traces of a war that has left its mark on how Britain, Canada, Australia, Newfoundland, France and several other nations remember World War I.

Why the Somme is important

More than a century after that war, descendants and travelers still walk the Somme, trying to take in what happened here: 300,000 dead in half a year of fighting.

You don't need to be a military historian to appreciate the Battle of the Somme sites. In fact, many visitors arrive knowing little more than the name.

What makes the area so compelling is that a vast historical event becomes something tangible: a crater in a field, an overgrown trench, a memorial covered with names, small cemeteries with their crosses neatly aligned, filled with soldiers who never made it back home and whose names, often, were unknown.

If you're in Amiens and have one day and a car, these four sites provide a perfect introduction to the Battle of the Somme, fought during a war recent enough to have left traces in family stories, yet old enough to belong to another world.

A day trip through the Somme battlefields

The Battle of the Somme left its mark across a large swath of northern France, and no single site can tell the whole story. These four stops each reflect a different aspect of the conflict, from the soldiers who fought on the front lines to the communities that lived alongside the war.

Day trip from Amiens to the Battlefields of the Somme

Stop 1: Vignacourt and life behind the lines

Most Battle of the Somme itineraries begin on the battlefield itself, but I'd actually start somewhere else.

During the war, the tiny village of Vignacourt sat behind the front lines. It had a railway station, and hundreds of thousands of British and Commonwealth troops passed through the village to train or rest, and to receive medical care before returning to the front.

If we know so much about what happened here, it's largely because of the village's remarkable legacy: a collection of some 4000 photographs taken by a farming couple, Louis and Antoinette Thuillier, between 1913 and 1919.

Unlike official military photographs, these images show soldiers as individuals. Australians, British troops, Chinese workers, Indian soldiers, Nepalese Gurkhas, and local villagers all made their way to the Thuilliers' camera.

The photographs give us a rare glimpse of everyday life behind the lines and show us that the Somme was not only a battlefield. It was also a place where local villagers, many of whom had never traveled beyond their immediate communities, suddenly found themselves living alongside people from across the world.

Today, many of the photographs are displayed at the Vignacourt 14–18 Interpretation Center, a small but moving museum run by a small, passionate team dedicated to preserving and sharing this extraordinary collection.

What makes this museum special is that it contains almost no scenes of war: no trenches or artillery, just faces. For anyone hoping to understand the human side of the Somme, it's the perfect first stop on this road trip.

Stop 2: Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial

If there is one place that helps visitors understand trench warfare, it is Beaumont-Hamel.

The site provides visible evidence of the war – you can still see craters, trenches, the contours of battle and you can discover just how close the Allied and German trenches were to one another. At some points, mere meters.

The memorial commemorates the Newfoundland Regiment, whose soldiers attacked German positions on the morning of 1 July 1916. (At the time, Newfoundland had not yet joined Canada and was a separate dominion of the British Empire.)

Of the approximately 800 men who marched into battle that morning, more than 700 were killed, wounded, or reported missing. The next morning, only 68 were available for roll call.

The losses were so devastating that Beaumont-Hamel became one of the defining events in Newfoundland's history and remains central to the island's collective memory.

For many visitors, this is the point at which the Battle of the Somme stops being an abstract event and becomes something real. Standing in the preserved landscape, it is possible to see how close the opposing trenches were and how difficult any attack would have been.

A massive bronze caribou, the Regiment's emblem, stands on a ridge overlooking the battlefield ©OffbeatFrance

Nearby, a traditional Newfoundland ranger station, built in the style of a wooden Newfoundland house, serves as the visitor center and reinforces the site's unique connection to the island.

A marked trail that loops through the memorial grounds takes about an hour and highlights the various sights. Volunteer guides greet visitors and offer to show them around – if one is available during your visit, take them up on their offer.

Stop 3: Thiepval Memorial

The largest memorial on the Somme towers above the surrounding countryside – you'll see it long before you reach it.

Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, the Thiepval Memorial commemorates more than 72,000 British and South African soldiers who died on the Somme and have no known grave.

Lutyens designed many of the major memorials and cemeteries built after the war, helping influence how the conflict would be remembered across the former British Empire.

Thiepval is not really a memorial to the dead. It is a memorial to the missing. Many of the men commemorated here simply disappeared in the fighting, their remains never found.

The Thiepval Memorial rises above the Somme countryside, inscribed with the names of more than 72,000 men who have no known grave ©OffbeatFrance

Today, descendants continue to travel here in search of family stories.

Human remains are occasionally uncovered during farming or construction work, allowing historians and forensic specialists to match names to the dead more than a century after the fighting ended.

Take a few minutes to walk beneath the memorial's vast arches and look closely at the stonework. The names are grouped by regiment rather than alphabetically, so comrades who fought together are remembered together. Many visitors arrive looking for a single name and end up examining thousands.

The compelling visitor center beneath the memorial is more about individual stories than military strategy: young men who enlisted with friends, or families who never learned what happened to their sons. 

Historial of the Great War at Thiepval - long shot of Joe Sacco's mural ©OffbeatFrance

Worth spending plenty of time on (I could easily have spent more than an hour here) is the Joe Sacco panorama in the visitor center. Sacco is best known for pioneering graphic journalism, using comics to explore history and war.

Stretching 60 meters (197 feet), this illustrated frieze depicts the opening day of the battle and was inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry because it tells a story like a comic strip. 

Unlike the medieval tapestry, though, Sacco's work is packed with meticulously researched details and contains no heroes, only thousands of soldiers caught up in an immense military machine ©OffbeatFrance

A QR code lets you follow the scene section by section, revealing details that are easy to miss at first glance.

Before leaving the memorial, step back and take it in from a distance. Rising as it does above the surrounding fields, it looks like a cathedral planted in the middle of the countryside, a reminder that for many families, this became the closest thing they would ever have to a grave.

If you're visiting around lunchtime, Le Cottage provided a welcome break between memorials and museums. It is one of the few places on the route where you can sit down and process everything you've just seen before continuing onwards.

Stop 4: Lochnagar Crater

A short drive from Thiepval and your final stop is one of the most dramatic physical traces of the battle.

Lochnagar Crater was created when British tunnellers spent months digging beneath German positions and packing the mine with explosives.

At 7:28 a.m. on 1 July 1916, the mine exploded, one of the largest man-made explosions in history up to that time.

Today, the crater remains a vast scar in the landscape. The size of it is stunning, as were the engineering effort that produced it and the violence that followed – photographs can't do its size justice.

Lochnagar requires very little explanation. All you have to do is look around you.

William Orpen, the Irish portrait painter turned official war artist, painted this scene at La Boisselle, near the Lochnagar crater, in August 1917 — a year after the battle, when the Somme had become, in his words, 'an enchanted land' of wildflowers and butterflies scattered among unmarked graves. The helmets left behind are the only remains of the soldiers who once wore them ©IWM

Other Somme battlefield sites worth visiting

The Somme contains far more sites than can comfortably be visited in a single day. If you have additional time, consider adding some of the following:

Franco-Australian Museum at Villers-Bretonneux ©Somme Tourisme - AC

• Villers-Bretonneux (30 minutes from Amiens) – Home to the Australian National Memorial, the Sir John Monash Centre, and the Franco-Australian Museum.
• Péronne (40 minutes) – The main museum town of the Somme, with the Historial de la Grande Guerre, one of France's leading First World War museums.
• Pozières (45 minutes) – An important site for Australian visitors, with memorials and battlefield remains.
• Thiepval area (45–50 minutes) – Beyond the main memorial, you'll find the Ulster Tower and several smaller cemeteries and memorials.
• Longueval (50 minutes) – Site of Delville Wood and the South African National Memorial.
• Noyelles-sur-Mer (1 hour) – Home to the Chinese Cemetery, which commemorates members of the Chinese Labour Corps who supported the Allied war effort.

Entrance to the Chinese Cemetery at Noyelles-sur-Mer ©Samuel Crampon

FAQ

Before you go...

The battlefields of the Somme mark one of the defining chapters of World War I. A generation later, another conflict would bring soldiers from many of the same nations back to northern France.

If you'd like to continue exploring France's wartime landscapes, the D-Day beaches of Normandy provide a fascinating next step.

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