The fields around the quiet village of Freakour

saw the blood of Yorkshire spent dearly on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

This week we returned to Piccadie

and we walked the lanes across those vast open landscapes of the Somme battlefields.

On a beautiful summer's morning in 1916, one writer described this as a sunlit picture of hell.

So let's return to those lanes and discover the history of Freakor.

It's high summer on the Somme and I'm standing in a valley between the villages of Becourt

and Becordel, close to the town of Albaer, the main hub on the Somme battlefields in 1916,

the town where the majority of soldiers who came to the Somme passed through,

either going to the trenches or coming out.

Dominated by the basilica, the church,

with its leaning statue of the Virgin Mary with her arms outstretched,

holding the infant Jesus, the leaning virgin or the golden virgin, it was a familiar landmark on the Somme in 1916.

This valley was behind our lines, and to my left, there's some trees this time of year.

There's little birdsong, birdsong period, has ended, but there are crows in the trees and a few pigeons making their way across the valley

and on the far side there are some banks and into those banks in 1916 were dug guns first

filled guns supporting the attack on the villages in this sector on the first day of the battle of the

som and later heavy artillery and there are some photographs of

Australian siege gunners with 9.2 inch howitzers firing their guns in support of the Australians

in the attack of posseers in July of 1916 but in front of me is a long narrow cemetery

Norfolk cemetery and we'll open the gate and go in.

Back on the Somme this week we're going to be walking the ground up and into the village of Freakor

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