#TrenchesTrip day 2 with @ChaileySchool Overnighted in Albert: it's a short hop to the Lochnagar Crater, on the ridge overlooking the town. Straight into landscape, use of terrain and siege tactics of trench warfare. The size of the crater always causes gasps from students.

The crater is privately owned and managed by @laGrandeMine @LochnagarCrater and this would be their big working weekend - it's always a pleasure to chat to volunteers, learn from them (and bung them a donation obvs).

Much is @ProfPeterDoyle territory - the war underground, picking up on the craters around Messines from yesterday. Also mentioning the training tunnels from Larkhill in Wiltshire found during archaeological work. Cecil Lewis gets quoted - seeing the mines go from his aeroplane.

To George Nugent's memorial and talk about the difficulty of attacking this position, with its long views & open killing grounds. We discuss his 1st July 1916, how he was found and identified. Silence, and the larks ascend.

And there's #folklore too as we consider the Virgin of Albert, as landmark, artillery target and cultural touchstone for the soldiers of the Somme.

Across to the Serre cemeteries now. One view that encapsulates so much about the landscapes of conflict. commemoration, reconstruction and myth-making.

In 2004 I led an excavation the Heidenkopf, a German position where Wilfred Owen was here: it's described in his poem The Sentry. Our brief from BBC was to find the German dugouts the poet & his men occupied. @kcatuniessex @WilfredOwenAssn @WilfOwenStory http://www.wilfredowen.org.uk/wilfred-owen/wilfreds-places/serre

One of the @ChaileySchool students will read the poem, then we discuss the story and the history that led up to it, before looking at the dig. Lack of geophysics mean we missed the dugouts by a few metres, but what we found was, as Owen Would have said, a "Strange Meeting".

We recovered 3 soldiers' remains - we explore the forensic. Two Germans - Albert Thielecke and Jakob Hönes (pictured). Albert had all his possessions with him: pipe, harmonica, watch, and a Prehistoric flint blade - uncanny experience for me as excavator. https://plugstreet.blogspot.com/2007/11/ 

Hönes was a farm labourer from near Stuttgart. As with Alan Mather yesterday, his death had ruined the family and left a mystery about his resting place. They said our work gave closure, especially to his last surviving son. Sometimes, our work matters!

Massive respect to Ralph Whitehead, expert on the German Army, for his help in identifying the unit involved and the fallen men. And to Volker Hartmann for work in the German archives.

The 3rd man? We know his Unit, time of death on 1st July 1916, coins show he'd visited the Channel Islands, a shell burst killed him. Alas, we have no name. He has a grave though, so I remind the students that all the Known Unto God were people once too, just like us.

There's a moment of Remembrance, then we ask @ChaileySchool students to remember that he has no family, so a few years ago, some students said that he was one of them, part of the Chailey family, and so he is. No-one is truly dead while we remember them!

And finally, let's consider those Germans, killed in the 1915 Battle of Hebuterne, fighting French poilus, whose cemetery and memorial chapel you saw in the landscape image. Never heard of it? Nor had I, despite #FWW being coalition warfare. Why is that, we ask? #Historigraphy

Continuing this #TrenchesTrip at the Sunken Lane nr Beaumont Hamel. Definitely First Day of the Somme territory. The Lancashire Fusiliers were in the lane at Zero Hour and we see the film before recreating the scene on the ground and discussing who's who

I paint a word picture of the situation, atmosphere, noise. How the nearby Hawthorn Mine shook the foundations of earth, but was blown too early to be really effective. I take them to the whistles blowing... I leave a question hanging: what happens next?

In No Man's Land we hear about the uncut wire, the machine guns on the ridge, casualties, resupply & informal truces. I cast one student as the junior officer and keep asking him what he's going to do, how will he get a message to Brigade? Every runner he selects is shot...

I thank him and then say that the officer might only have been 3 years older than him and with about as much life experience. I then admit that the third runner was my Great Uncle Walter, Hull Pals at Oppy Wood, he didn't die but was badly hurt - 3rd runner of 3 #TrueStory

Up to Thiepval. We sit and look over the valley of the Ancre, appreciating the German advantage. Then it's Hobbits, Nazgul, Dead Marshes and a lamp post in a snowy forest, as we think about Tolkien & Lewis in Thiepval Wood. Is the Hobbithole the perfect, imagined dugout? Discuss!

The @CWGC Memorial at Thiepval is another breathtaker for the students. Again, I do a short intro and let them soak it up. Some will have relatives to find, others will look for men from their villages, their own names, or seek the Royal Sussex panels.

I'll go and see the East Yorks, read all those good Hull names. I'll find the King's Own, as our man from Serre is recorded there, and I always go and lay a cross for George Butterworth, DLI, composer, folksong collector & Morris Dancer: we all have our tribes represented here.

We gather for final thoughts on Remembrance, those who came home, legacy of war and for their thoughts. It's been a cultural roller-coaster and they've been fab. Rejoicing at the news that there'll be drinks, cake and ice cream at the next stop - we're coming out of the line.

Tea & cake at Avril Williams' @ Auchonvillers. This is where I did my first #FWW dig with No Man's Land, investigating the Comms Trench in the back garden. Also because I met my chum Rickers & her @ChaileySchool group here in 2005 and she asked me to guide for them in 06

Thank you for joining @ChaileySchool on the @HoltsTours virtual coach #TrenchesTrip I have no idea whether I'll be guiding them for real next year, but every year so far has been a pleasure, strangely, this year included. Thank you, Goodnight!