For our 200th episode of the Old Front Line, we returned to where we started on the Somme battlefields of 1916

and follow the tracks and pathways across those vast open fields to where men from Yorkshire and the Midlands attack the German positions

at a place called Nab Valley.

I'm recording this episode on the 1st of July,

a day that needs little introduction here.

It's the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme and it's an appropriate

day to produce a podcast about an event that took place on that blackest of Great War days.

For many of us, the 1st of July, if we're passionate about the Great War, is a day of contemplation.

When we think perhaps of the soldiers in our own family tree, or the men and the women that we've

researched, the stories that we've found as we've crisscrossed that old front line,

the Somme seems to draw us ever back to its pathways

and the men of the SOM who marched that way in 1916.

And for many today who have visited the SOM on this anniversary,

that have gravitated towards those famous locations connected to the 1st of July story they're well visited and we've discussed them on this podcast

many times there's so much more to the SOM than just those big places I think. It's important

to visit them and visit them again. But there's another SOM, a wider SOM, and it's important to

remember that too. And along that old front line of the SOM,

there are many quiet places,

perhaps less visited,

and that's where our SOM walk will take us today.

And aside from recording this episode

on the SOM anniversary, This one also marks the 200th episode of the old

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