How to get to Vimy Ridge

Our first stop in France was a 2hr drive north to Vimy Ridge. A small piece of land outside the town of Vimy. All the directions I read on the net was “follow the signs”. That didn’t cut it for me so I decided to write this post on how to get there by car.

From: Paris and CDG Airport
Take:

• A1 North to Calais
• Get off at Arras (D939)
• Go through the city (D260 to D917)
• D917 turns into N17 North
• (You can start looking for signs now.)
• After you go past (under) E15 you will drive through a hamlet
• Just North of it you will turn left on “Route des Canadiens”. This is a small rural road barely big enough to fit two cars. It’s actually a nice road, lined with trees.
• At the end of the road you’ll come to a T-intersection.
• Turn Right: to go up the hill and get to Memorial. The memorial stands alone on the hill and all the fields are cleared so it looks smaller then it’s actual size. By the way – this is the BACK of the monument. To get a better feeling take the left path at the entrance and the path will take you around the edge of the monument park to the edge of the front. Here you can get a great view and a better feeling of why this is Canada’s largest monument (see pictures below).
• Turn Left: to go to the battlefield. This isn’t one of the best preserved fields but it will give you the sense of how close the fighting was. Don’t miss (like we did) the guided tour starting at 12pm & 3pm. The tour will take you around the topside trenches and give you access to the tunnels underneath. You can only access the tunnels with the tour. You can freely walk around the topside trenches.

View Vimy Ridge in a larger map

From Vimy Ridge, posted by Norm Roussel on 7/29/2011 (14 items)

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Overall the Vimy Memorial is not to be missed and I’ll go as far as to say I want to go plan to go back a do the Great War memorial trail where there’s tons of grave sites and memorials to visit.