Menen Gate

Every evening at 8pm, beneath the dome of the Menen Gate in Ypres, a bugler sounds The Last Post. This ceremony has continued daily since 1927 when The Menen Gate Memorial to the Missing was unveiled - though during WW2 the service relocated to Surrey. Although it is 96 years since the end of WW1, this year's ceremony of 11/11/14 is likely to be very well attended. Ypres/Ieper itself will be packed around this time - as it is through the summer months - with tourists visiting Flanders and its battlefields and numerous cemeteries.

Ypres was raised to the ground during WW1 but every building in the old town has been rebuilt - including the huge Cloth Hall. The ruin of this magnificent building is an iconic image of WW1. The town's resurrection was funded by German reparations, the final bricks being laid in the mid 1960s. The Cloth Hall is now home to the Flanders Field Museum.

Like Albert in the Somme, Ypres is a base for Battlefield tours - especially from the UK. Passendael is not far away as is the spooky Messines Ridge and its picturesque lakes of gruesome origin. These are the water-filled craters left by the nineteen British mines that were detonated simultaneously at 3.10am on 7th June 1917 killing over 10,000 German soldiers.

Not far away are the trenches and piles of shell cases at Hill 62 - a ramshackle museum full of bizarre exhibits and a collection of occasionally stomach turning war photos.

Ypres is within easy reach of Calais and Dunkerque on a bike and, with the exception of the hill town of Cassel and its fantastic views, the route is very flat and can be done, in a large part, on canal tow-paths.

There is a campsite - Jeugdstadion, just to the south-east of the Menin Gate - with basic hikers huts bookable per night. There is another site a few miles south in Kemmel.