places to visit to do with Wold War 2

[camperdown]

My children would like to visit places of interest in the the uk and France to do with World War 2. Their ages are 6 to 11. Any top tips of age appropriate destinations/places to visit/activities etc? Thank you

Imperial War Museum in London. Great museum.

Eden Camp in North Yorkshire - covers WW1 and 2.

Cabinet war rooms

Elvington Air museum in North Yorkshire is good too.
D-Day museum in Pompey is fab too

Eden Camp had me in floods of tears. I was not the only one either. My very lovely Uncle had been a prisoner of war in Changi in Singapore and that was covered at the camp.
Is your 6 year old knowledgeable about the wars? My dd was 8 when we visited and ds would have been 4. Both are sensitive kids and both were a little disturbed.
That said it is a fantastic place and really really detailed.

Bletchly Park in Milton Keynes - code breaking

Normandy - beaches , museums, cemetaries and preserved sights a plenty. May be a bit too much for a 6yo though. Pegasus Bridge memorial very moving. There are V2 rocket launch complexes in Picardy, an hour or so from Calais.

Air fields like Duxford, Biggin Hill etc. Imperial War Museum is good at school holidays as they have people who lived through WW2 on site around the 1940's house. You can avoid the Holocaust part (separate floor). Dover Castle (English Heritage stage themed events). Chislehurst caves if still open.

As LIZS says - Normandy has it all, in fact we will be there at Half Term (including a night in the Somme en-route just to ensure the full battlefield experience).

Thank you for all the suggestions.

The Imperial War Museum and the Cabinet War rooms sound great but are not in a convenient location.

Eden camp and Dover castle would be more do-able. Milton Keynes would be good to visit too.
Normandy sounds good.

Does anyone have more detailed info on what to see and do in Normandy?

Duxford is much more than an airfield, as well as huge numbers of historic aircraft it has a land warfare museum, Battle of Britain, conservation and american air museum. My boys (FiL, dh, and both ds 6 + 3) love it.
OK - we've got friends memberships

There's an Imperial Ware Museum in Salford/Manchester too.

You could start with a war memorial anywhere. There is one in most villages.

An former lecturer of mine went on a school trip with his son's GCSE history class to France and Belgium. He said that hearing "The Last Post" player by a solo cornert-ist on the big grave-fields was one of the most moving moments of his life.

camperdown - I can give you loads of Normandy info but will have to do it later today

A lot of places also have air museums (relating to airfileds nearby), naval musueums (although these are predominantely int eh portsmouth/Gosport area) and army mueusms, most of which ave a section on WW1 or WW2

In fact there is a lot of military history around the Portsmouth area, we lived there for 3 years, and went to most of them
as Is aid above there's the D-Day museum, there, the Historic Dockyards, Royal Armouries, then there is a submarine museum, but I cannot remember fi that's Gosport of Portsmouth.

here

here

d-day

These are in in Portsmouth and I have been to all of them, they are very good

We visited Pegasus Bridge, museum and cemetary at Bayeux, Falaise (there is a relaly stuffy private museum of relics (German tanks etc) and showing the phases of attack on Falaise, if off the beaten track there, beaches with Mulberry harbours at Arromanche (also 3d cinema and museum which we didn't do as ds had visited previously) . There are plenty of others, large memorial at Caen for example and various batteries, and you can buy a discount card for 1e to visit several at a reduced rate.

I agree with LIZS about Pegasus Bridge & Caen museum.

The Bayeux area is a good place to base yourself. The coast going west from Arromanches covers the "Omaha" & "Utah" Landing Beaches (not known by these names now). The coast to the east is much more built up holiday beaches, there are memorials & museum but less easy to imagine the landings. This is a useful website.

At Arromanches you can still see a lot of the Mulberry Harbour.
Heading west there is Longues Sur Mer Battery, then Pointe du Hoc, good US video clip. You should go to the American Cemetery at Colleville sur Mer then down onto "Omaha" beach. Another good place is Maisy Battery. For a contrast I suggest the German Cemetery at La Cambe.
There are loads of museums dotted around, some good, some bad.

For accommodation we always rent a Gite

......and Azeville Battery is a good one to visit.

We visited Normandy beaches with 6 year old girl in November. She really enjoyed it. We visited Longues sur mer, Pointe du Hoc, Arromanches and the canadian museum on gold beach. We stayed in La Coeur de Sainte Catherine B and B in Honfleur really lovely place which we found through Alisdair Sawdays website.

What she particularly enjoyed is being France HSE had not gone mad and you could go in the gun emplacements etc and really get the feel for what it was really like.

La Coupole near St Omer and the Bunker at Eperleques. Both approx 30 mins inland from Calais so depending on your location in the UK, could be done on a day trip to France.