Road of Hope and Sorrow

In 2016, Nigel Bruce, passionate cycle tourist and enthusiastic student of history, cycled along the Western Front of the Great War exploring the countless battlefields and poignant memorials, war museums, and the cities, towns and villages devastated by four years of industrial warfare. This was also a personal journey, with an author sensitive to loss immersing himself in the inescapable evidence of destruction of young lives on an unimaginable scale. Family memoirs and correspondence of a French artillery officer bring authentic first-hand experiences, at turns tragic, terrifying, and poetic. The many colour photos and drawings by the author convey the rich heritage available to today’s visitors, while archive images, and the work of war artists, writers and poets provide insights from those directly involved. Detailed maps show Nigel’s route and sites of interest to orientate the reader and inform those planning their own trips. Documenting the evolution of his own reactions, Nigel recounts how cycling the Western Front brought its share of sorrow, not least through unsettling echoes in contemporary populist rhetoric. But this is also a story of hope, with many moving examples of remembrance for those on both sides of the conflict, and of reconciliation between former enemies.