The first part to the route planning for our Explorer Belt was to find places to visit and then find out the best way to get between these places.
The starting location for our Expedition was decided to be Amiens. This seems like a suitable place to start as the Battle of Amiens (which began on 8th August 1918) was the beginning of the Hundred Days Offensive, that ultimately ended the First World War, 100 years ago.
Key places on our route that we will visit are the Somme 1916 Museum, Lochnagar Crater, Vimy Trenches, Menin Gate, Tyne Cot Cemetry, and Passchendaele Musuem. To visit these places we will be using a variety of transport. We will be walking, cycling, and using public transport to be able to maximise the time available to complete our main project.
Unfortunately, the route we want to take goes over the corners of 4 different French IGN maps. Instead of having to purchase 4 maps for 1 day I have got an online version of where we want to go, screenshot the map, printed the image, and finally overlapped the images and stuck them down on a larger sheet of paper which can fold up to a similar size to the maps.
As you can see from the images that there are some similarities with French IGN maps and with OS maps but they are not as detailed as OS maps that we are used to. Using these maps will be part of the challenge of being in a different country and experiencing their way of life.
