Museum of Passchendaele

As usual, on our way back to the ferry after the Crisis show we stopped off somewhere with a WW1 connection. This year it was the fairly new Museum of Passchendaele in the chateau at Zonnebeke.

It's a very good museum and well worth a visit if you are in the area. Set inside the chateau are various rooms with lots of uniforms and other information about the area during the 14-18 period and in particular the third battle for Ypres in 1917. One of the most interesting parts of the museum is a reconstructed command dugout, which you go down into by a series of steps. There are lots of vignettes in there of command rooms, dressing stations and dormitories, and I can tell you that on a bleak Sunday afternoon, when you are the only people in the museum, the sound effects are very real!

The museum is in the process of expansion (like many other places getting ready for the forthcoming centenary) and from April next year will have a much bigger dugout and reconstructed British and German trenches in the grounds, so should be even better!

I took loads of pictures (as usual!) and some are below. The uniforms are of course in glass cases so some of the pictures suffer from a bit of reflection.

The chateau

French cavalryman

 

Belgian infantryman

 

 

German infantryman

 

 

French infantryman

 

 

German infantry and pillbox

 

 

Dressing station in the dugout - glad I'm not that casualty!



Photos from Crisis

Back from Antwerp now and what a great show it was. Congratulations are due to all at Tin Soldiers of Antwerp (the club who run the show) for another excellent day in a terrific new venue. There was plenty of space, plenty of light and plenty of gamers! If you were one of the many who stopped at our game then we'd like to say thank you for the interest!

This was the last outing for the Race to the Sea game, and it will now go into dignified retirement in CTK HQ. But we'll soon start to build our 2013 show game, which is now likely to be based on a part of the Battle of the Marne in 1914, so watch out for updates - I'll post photos as we build it as ever.

In the meantime, here's some last photos of Race to the Sea.

 

 

Crisis Wargames Show

Just finished loading the car up to go to a show that in many ways is my favourite of the year, Crisis at Antwerp. It's in a new venue this year, which promises to be much bigger with better lighting and even better catering! There are lots more traders too, so if you are in Europe and have the chance to get to Antwerp on Saturday I can thoroughly recommend it!

It will of course be the last outing of the Race to the Sea game, which is appropriate really since the game is also based in Belgium.

See you there Sander!