Colincamps, France: travel guide to the Somme front-line village and its war cemeteries

Colincamps is a small village in the Somme department of northern France, set in the rolling farmland of Picardy about 11 kilometres north of Albert. A quiet farming community today, during the First World War it lay just behind the British front line and is now an important place of remembrance on the Somme battlefields.

For travellers searching for Colincamps, the Somme battlefields, Euston Road Cemetery or First World War sites, it offers a moving stop on any tour of the 1916 front.

The First World War

Colincamps and the road junction known as "Euston" lay within the Allied lines before the Somme offensive of 1 July 1916, and the village was regularly shelled and stood on the front line again in the spring of 1918. On its land are two Commonwealth war cemeteries: Euston Road Cemetery, which holds 1,293 Commonwealth burials and commemorations and was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield, and the Sucrerie Military Cemetery. The graves recall the failed attack on Serre on the first day of the battle, the later capture of nearby Beaumont-Hamel and the fighting of 1918.

The battlefields around

The village makes a good base for exploring this part of the Somme front, close to the Serre Road cemeteries and to Beaumont-Hamel, with its memorials to those who fell on these gentle chalk uplands.

Practical information

Colincamps lies about 11 kilometres north of Albert and some 28 kilometres south of Arras, easily reached by road and within the heart of the Somme remembrance trails north of Amiens.