Click here for our one day Normandy D Day Tour

WHAT OUR VISITORS SAY...

‘This was my third and most meaningful trip to Normandy. Seeing it by air really put things in perspective for me. You are a great guide and delightful people to spend the day with.’ ......

Visitor from San Antonio, Texas.

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* STOP PRESS *

Summer 2008

The Pointe du Hoc and Mulberry Harbour are only 2 hours from London with our Normandy D Day Air/Land Tour

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THE WHITE CLIFFS, AGINCOURT AND CRECY

BRITISH SHOP IN SAN FRANCISCO

TRAIN YOUR COMPANY

SISTER LTU DOVE FROM GERMANY

SPECIAL BIRTHDAY GIFTS

ONE DAY AND OVERNIGHT NORMANDY AIR/LAND TOURS

OMAHA BEACH TOURS

COMBINE NORMANDY WITH SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL'S ARCHIVES

LOOK BEFORE YOU BOOK - TRAVEL TIPS FOR AMERICANS AND CANADIANS

The white cliffs of Dover - as Julius Caesar first saw them but Napoleon and Hitler never did, not even as tourists - we also take small groups by sea and road with a very comfortable private bus. When the weather is good you can sit on deck for the whole sea crossing.

We sail from Portsmouth or Dover - if from the latter we suggest two overnight stays in France, allowing time for visits to the battlefields of Agincourt and Crecy.

Portsmouth is home for the Royal Navy and HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar.

A ferry wake leading back towards Dover Castle on its chalk down. For more white cliffs pictures see the website of Dover, New York, which gained its name from a bluff that looks remarkably like the cliffs on the left.

Glyndebourne Festival Opera season opens. Enjoying champagne in the gardens beside the lake before a superb performance by world opera stars and the London Philharmonic. The main interval is long enough for a picnic and ladies wear evening dresses and gents dinner jackets at this annual summer celebration of fine music in eccentric British style.

Glorious weather looking from Surrey into Kent. Over the wooded hill along the horizon sits Chartwell, home of Sir Winston Churchill.

Westerham village at the foot of the hill on the left is birthplace of General Wolfe.

BRITISH FARE

People joke about British cooking but when you spend weeks at a time on the Continent there is no question, cravings stir for cod and chips, moreover in Switzerland where you take out a mortgage to buy good steak, sometimes one smells gravy on a pink prime rib and Yorkshire pud.

Those living in the USA are less frustrated. You have a British home away from home, a shop at number 726 on 15th Street in San Francisco - British American Imports - who have a website offering a long, long list of drinks and food which they will deliver all over the USA, indeed, the World.

Here's their web address - www.britshoppe.com - happy feasting!

TRAIN YOUR COMPANY

Time to wake the chairman?

Perhaps the company management team needs our leadership training?

The Mayfair Dove at her home airfield, Biggin Hill, Kent.

SISTER LTU DOVE FROM GERMANY

Mayfair Dove has a very popular, elegant and graceful sister based at Munchengladbach in Germany. The LTU Dove represented her type at the recent fly-in of classic aircraft at Ecuvillens near Fribourg. We believe that the Mayfair and LTU Doves are the only pair still operating in European skies as a small airliners. The LTU Dove is fully equipped with dual controls and all the latest navigation aids. She is flown by highly experienced airline pilots. Ingo Presser, her owner has been flying Doves for forty years.

Your hostess opens the door to the World!

Have a look at the website - well worth it - you will find photographs of the aircraft on first arrival in a container, its painstaking renovation, pictures of her flying, and a wonderful photograph of her passengers dressed in the very latest 1950s fashion. All found at www.ltu-classic.de plus everything you need to know about how to book a pleasure flight in this beautifully maintained classic airliner.

She's within easy reach if you live in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Denmark as well as Germany.

The website is a lesson on how to design a really good site with some wonderful atmosphere brush strokes!

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SPECIAL BIRTHDAYS, CELEBRATIONS AND LEARNING FROM ANOTHER GENERATION

Four Americans and one Brit - braving a windy March morning at Biggin Hill for a ' birthday surprise ' clandestinely arranged by Sarah for husband, Mason whose brother flew in from Miami the previous afternoon specially for the trip.

Bad weather made the decision exactly when to go one of the trickiest we can remember. Despite the gales, rather like General Eisenhower, Sarah kept cool, moreover unlike Ike, did not chain smoke nor read westerns.

Less than hour after take off - approaching the Orne River Bridge and the Pegasus Bridge.

NORMANDY TOURS FOR AMERICANS LIVING IN LONDON

Our day tour of the Normandy D Day Beaches from London makes a wonderful surprise birthday gift for someone special. Forming a group to book the tour allows you to share the cost among family and friends. From our previous careers we know how to keep secrets. Nowadays we arrange birthday cakes as well!

Americans living and working in London are only two hours from the legendary D Day beaches. Within thirty minutes of landing you are standing in the town square of Saint Mere Eglise. An hour later you are walking the sands of Utah Beach and soon afterwards Omaha Beach.

Americans working over here who take our tour remark how often they reflected that the D Day beaches are so close, and determined they would not miss this rare chance before returning home across the Atlantic.

There is no better place to understand the awesome risks taken and the heavy price paid for our modern liberal societies than on the bluffs above Omaha Beach.

We've also taken company management teams and their clients. Have a look at our management training and company reward page for ideas.

' Peng mun ee, puryo il gun '

Seeing once is worth a hundred questions - an old Korean proverb from China.

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The main cost of our tours is the flying - our aerial tour brings the D Day beaches into sharp perspective thereby significantly enhancing the ground tour. The same logic applies to all our tours.

We try to keep prices stable. Only dramatic alterations to the rate of exchange for the Euro and steep rises in fuel prices impact on our tour costs. We quote in pounds sterling and once you make a firm booking, short of an international crisis, we hold that quoted price.

Our track record on this front is good, we've managed to keep our tour prices steady for the last three years. Families book months in advance because they know the price quoted for a tour is unlikely to change.

Booking with us will save you hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars, compared with the prices charged by operators who attempt to copy our tours. Occasionally we still see people taking a copy tour for a thousand dollars more than we charge - same places, same planes, same pilots - but escorts rather than military veterans as guides. You can't teach experience.

For once the best actually costs less.

More tips below at Look before you Book.

We can extend your day tour of Normandy with an overnight stay at a very reasonable price. We can take you over to Normandy by ferry and road - this requires at least one overnight.

We are sometimes asked about deposits. As a rule we do not take deposits - although you are welcome to pay one if you wish. Instead, once a customer has confirmed their intention to travel, we take a credit card details - although at that stage no money off the card - just to cover us against a last minute cancellation other than for reasons of force majeure.

OMAHA BEACH

On 6 June last year the new American Visitor Center opened alongside the American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer. The center lies about a quarter mile east from the viewpoint shown in the above photo taken beside the map table where most visitors - from Presidents to children - pause to look at the peaceful sands and reflect upon the price paid in young lives on 6 June 1944 for modern Europe's freedom.

Beautifully designed, the new visitor center fits snugly into the slope on the bluff leading down to the eastern curve along the seven thousand yard crescent beach. From the center a new path leads down to the sea shore. There is a security check to enter the visitor center. Our advice is to leave all keys and metal - if at all possible - in your car and then your ' checking ' will take only a few seconds.

The guiding theme links the massive strategic risk - democracy itself was at stake - with individual men and women, some wearing uniform, some civilians, who gave their utmost on D Day. There are three galleries, each with its own theme - courage, competence and sacrifice - brought alive by telling individual stories.

The next of kin help desk to find a loved one's grave has moved into the new center.

Wonderful visual displays combine documents, maps and movies. General Eisenhower on film recalling his own memories of the weeks leading to D Day and the crucial 48 hours around the invasion is a must.

All the superb media and inter actives for the center were made by Max Lewkowicz and Dog Green Productions - who produced the film ' Normandy Five ' - and now are working on a new film about the Rangers at Pointe du Hoc. This film is for a new visitor center on the Pointe du Hoc, at long last bringing an official museum to the headland.

Max Lewkowicz is a historian specialising on World War Two and works on films for the History Channel and many, many military museums around the world. You can find out more about his productions at:
http://www.normandyfive.com/

We are sometimes asked whether somewhat lurid stories published in recent books about that grim morning are true. May we suggest that the veterans of Omaha Beach are the only people alive who can answer with authority. The link below answers the most frequently asked question. Sometimes it can prove difficult to raise this page, which belongs to a site with a membership system and passwords - in which case, ask Google to find the link.

http:/warchronicle.com/correcting_the_record/ambrose_coxswains.htm

TAKE A DREAM FLIGHT ALONGSIDE THE DIAMOND PEAKS

Nebel Meer - Fog Sea covering Canton Bern but not the great wall of the Berner Oberland

Our flight to see the Swiss Alps requires an overnight in Bern, capital of Switzerland. The magnificent and friendly old city has great restaurants and excellent hotels. Why not treat yourself? For several new pictures of Bern please see Swiss Alps Tour.

Summer has arrived - Bern Balloon Club takes off from Belp Airport, Switzerland

You might also like to look at the pictures below, taken early one morning only a couple of minutes walk from the church in Muri bei Bern.

Starting from the left you can see the Schreckhorn peeping over a tree, the Finsteraarhorn like a needle and highest in the Bernese Oberland, the Eiger north face - the Monch is hidden behind a tree - the Jungfrau and then along the ridge is the Breithorn, finally the Blumlisalp just looking over the wooded hill. Below that hill is Belp Airport.

This is the kind of morning when a flight alongside the Alps is quite spectacular. Adrian is back in Bern and busy researching new tours around Switzerland and neighbouring parts of France and Germany. The emphasis is on military and political history with a dash of culture and plenty of glorious countryside.

Summer evenings are breath-taking.

This the Alpengluhn - when the mountains turn pink as the sun slips below the Jura to the west and the Earth's shadow climbs the Alps.

Now for something new and quite exceptional which you might wish to combine with a Normandy Air/Land Tour.

CHURCHILL COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE

Founded in 1960 on Sir Winston wishes for a college promoting the sciences, Churchill College is home for the Churchill Archives and the Thatcher Archives. They are a goldmine for historians, authors and students. The archives are open by appointment to anyone and you will find much more information about the Churchill Archives via the college website - you'll find a link below. Obviously the more notice, the better, given that many people wish to study the Archives. Research visitors view the archives on micro-film and the vast majority of the collections are produced in their original format in the reading room. We can arrange a tour of the archives escorted by a member of the staff who will show you some of the original documents - we take great care because we are looking at papers such as the actual notes that Sir Winston used in the House of Commons for his famous speeches. If there is something you would particularly enjoy seeing, please let us know in advance, we can ask the staff. We make a small contribution towards the upkeep of the archives as our way of saying thank you for the personal tour.

We can only recommend this rewarding experience; indeed, would suggest that anyone taking our Normandy Air/Land Tour would find it well worth setting aside a further day for a visit to Churchill College Cambridge, Madingley American Cemetery and the superb collection of aircraft at the Imperial War Museum at Duxford a few miles south of Cambridge. If you would like to see the archives - Adrian Hill can make the appointment on your behalf with the senior staff - and your day includes a walk around Cambridge.

Please have a look Churchill College for more about the Churchill Archives. These consist of Sir Winston Churchill's papers plus much else including the papers of 570 other people thereby providing a window onto the vast canvass of the Churchill era. Their Finest Hour is a quotation from one of Sir Winston Churchill's greatest speeches. Have a look at the page which describes those desperate months throughout summer of 1940.

Baroness Margaret Thatcher was Britain's first and so far, only female Prime Minister. She is a staunch friend of the United States of America. The archives contain Baroness Thatcher's papers and many mementos of more than a decade as Prime Minister.

Among the archives is a speech that Adrian Hill wrote for Mrs Thatcher when as Prime Minister she addressed the Canadian Parliament in September 1983, the first British Prime Minister to speak before both Houses of the Parliament in Ottawa since Winston Churchill's famous ' some chicken; some neck ' address in December 1941.

NINETY YEARS SINCE ARMISTICE DAY

November 2008 brings the 90th anniversary of the guns falling silent along the Western Front from the Channel to Switzerland. Anyone interested in a tour of these battlefields - although some of the most peaceful and beautiful countryside in France to this day they still possess a haunting atmosphere - please let us know by email. We can arrange a tour around your interests.

Along the northern part of the front are the great battlefields of Mons, Ypres where British, ANZACs and Canadians fought, Ploeg Steert - swiftly renamed Plug Street by the Tommies, Vimy Ridge where the Canadians won glory, Cambrai where the first tank battle was fought, Chemin des Dames near Reims and the Somme where the British Army lost 19,000 men killed on the first morning. Further south are Verdun where the French losses were appalling and it's still regarded as a sacred place, the Argonne Forest and Saint Mihiel made legendary by the Americans.

WEBSITE

Lots more new photos and two new pages - The Man behind the Plan and Map Table - the first tells how before Pearl Harbour as a young colonel, later General Wedemeyer drew up the plan which shortly afterwards became the Allied strategy; the second describes the military balance on both sides of the Channel just before D Day and also explains how to understand the organisation of the Allied and German armies.

The more our visitors know before a tour, the more they get out of the tour. Those taking a tour - and indeed students - will find a great deal of background about the planning and execution of D Day on several briefing pages. We regularly add material. You can find this briefing via our Home and Contact pages.

Please read the tips below - before booking any tours of Britain and the Continent - whether or not you travel with us; the advice will save you money....

LOOK BEFORE YOU BOOK

TRAVEL TIPS FOR AMERICANS AND CANADIANS

THE EASY WAY TO PAY LESS

CHECK THOSE CREDENTIALS

Our backgrounds are given at our Air Adviser, our Guides, our Team. How we drew from our combined experience and created British Sky Tours is described at the Sky Tours Story which gives our credentials for taking you and your children flight-seeing and touring.

Our approach and sample prices are found at the Easy Sky Guide and Easy Aircraft Guide with links to sample tour schedules. We believe you must demand only the highest levels of competence before offering tours where a famous place or event first is explained from the air before exploring on the ground.

We know from all the people who have taken our Normandy D Day tour that it's a special trip, for many the trip of a lifetime, often to celebrate a treasured anniversary, a birthday or just a long nurtured wish. Only the best will do for such occasions.

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RED CARPET TREATMENT FOR YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS

While our air/land tours are not unique - we've seen such claims - we've been operating for eight years and like to think our team are second to none.

Once you set foot on these islands, British Sky Tours take care of your family and friends with the same kind of comfort, safety and convenience that years ago everyone took for granted. Nowadays such pleasant touring is possible only through private travel.

We specialise in private air travel and tours designed for families, friends, staff, clients and academic institutions. We show you those places off the usual tourist trails, places we know from living in the countries over many years. You can book our services as a part of your holiday or just for a short trip. We can fly you wherever you wish in Europe, meet you in Normandy or Switzerland, whatever suits your plans.

More at our Tours and Touring pages.

Our USA agent is Barry Hyatt, whose company was established on Manhattan Island in 1932. Barry has many years experience in the travel business and we regard his representation of our tours as a great compliment.

Why not treat your family, your colleagues, your clients, indeed yourself.

Safe Hands

Bill Pritchard and Dave Frost are former British Airways jumbo jet training captains,

both own pilot's log books showing five years in the sky at the controls of big airliners.

HOP OVER TO NORMANDY WITH BRITISH SKY TOURS

Our Normandy air tour brings the D Day landing grounds and beaches within a day trip from hotels in Central London. That's the second money saving advice - there's a lot of life going on beyond Central London.

Previously tours to Normandy required at least 3 to 4 days. Many families fly over to Normandy and the Channel Islands by private plane; what sets apart British Sky Tours is the spectacular aerial tour and the deeper understanding this gives our visitors. Apart from you enjoying a good holiday, our tandem purpose at British Sky Tours is to make travel and history fun, thereby helping all generations though especially the young to understand the past, how sometimes humanity's fate hangs in the balance. And how nothing is impossible - no matter how fearsome the odds - when good friends stick together.

A glance at a recent article by Adrian Hill gives the flavour of that special relationship between the United States of America and the British Commonwealth.

We've added new background about the planning of D Day code-named Operation Overlord.

You can make enquiries and book all our tours - air, Chunnel/ferry and road - through ourselves in Sedlescombe, East Sussex, UK and through our agent, Barry Hyatt CTC of Air & Marine Travel in Brewster, New York, USA.

You are very welcome to email post@britishskytours.com or airmartrav@suscom.net for more information.

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FINDING YOUR WAY AROUND OUR WEBSITE

Tours with overnight stays are offered by Channel Tunnel, ferry and road.

Our team, our guides and Air Adviser

How we operate is found at the Easy Sky Guide

For sample tour prices glance at the Easy Aircraft Guide

We always quote - please feel welcome to email for price quotes.

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ABOUT BRITISH SKY TOURS

LINKS

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