Battlefield Tours

Leaving tomorrow very early to do a couple of back-to-back recces in Portugal and Spain in order to finalize the details of two battlefield tours I shall be leading for Holts Tours in May and June.

On return I'm having the remains of my gall bladder removed and will at last be without the tube that has been sticking out of my side since January. Not to mention being able once more to eat meat, cheese and all the other things that make dining a pleasure.

So blogging is likely to be patchy for April, which is a shame because OR has moved from the hundreds to the thousands of views per week since my last hiatus during December 2010. Once thing I find particularly gratifying is that the back catalogue accounts for nearly half the views, indicating that from time to time I tap out posts of lasting interest and, I hope, worth.

The Tours

• The first is also the first commercial tour of the battlefields of the British Battalion in the Spanish Civil War, covering the Casa de Campo/Ciudad Universitaria, Jarama, Villanueva de la Cañada and Mosquito Ridge, which gutted the Battalion, before heading north (taking in the battle of Guadalajara en route even though the British were not involved) to cover Belchite, Quinto, Caspe, Calaceite and finally the last forlorn battles of the Ebro offensive.  
• The second treads more traditional ground following Wellington's Campaigns in Portugal and the Border, covering Roliça, Vimeiro, the Lines of Torres Vedras, Buçaco, Sobral, the Coa, Almeida, Fuentes de Oñoro, the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, the Bridge at Alcántara, Albuera, the siege of Badajoz and Elvas.
• Later in the year I'll be leading another exciting new tour, The American Independence War in the North, based on my book, running down the Richelieu-Hudson valley from Montreal to New York before going to Princeton and Philadelphia to cover the key battles that decided the war in the North.

Next year I'll be leading tours of the Independence War in the South, also a couple more based on my books of the Falklands War and of the Warlords of the Italian Renaissance, as well as touring Wellington's battles in the north of Spain, the Pyrenees and southern France.

TTFN