“At the going down of the sun, we will remember them.”

The Ode of Remembrance is one of the most powerful and emotive epitaphs commemorating the fallen from the two deadly world wars.

This year, being 100 years since the First World War fully hurled into massacre mode, and 70 years since VE Day, it is a time of remembrance as we commemorate the lives lost in both wars.

There is a perfect opportunity to pay your own respects in Pas-de-Calais.

Far from a corridor into and out of France, Calais boasts a wealth of memorials and physical reminders of the Second World War, and the brutality of Hitler’s Nazi party’s rule in the country.

Riddled with craters from incoming allied bombs, the region is also home to the Atlantic Wall, a series of superstructures built by Hitler’s Nazis designed to fire huge bombs, namely the V1s, V2s and V3s, on to British soil, in a bid to destroy the nation and crush the morale of the civilian population.

Arriving on a sunny but blustery Thursday afternoon after a pleasantly smooth ferry crossing courtesy of P&O, myself and a group of fellow journalists were whisked away to the Calais WW2 Museum.

Calais is often brushed over when recounting the Second World War, with much emphasis placed on the D-Day landing beaches and in particular Normandy, but this museum charts the timeline of the war – and the German invasion of France.

Tucked away in a public park in an old bunker, the museum displays a variety of fascinating memorabilia from the time – both Allied and Nazi.

Following the whistle-stop visit, we were taken to the first super-structure of our tour, the Blockhaus d’Éperlecques, buried in the heart of woodland near a village called Saint Omer, around half-anhour’s drive from the centre of Calais.

Nothing about this site is miniscule.

The sheer scale of the site is jawdropping before even contemplating the suffering of prisoners of war who were forced to build it, or the intended devastation it was meant to cause.

It is 75 metres in length by 35 metres in width, and a huge 33 metres in height. It took more than 35,000 people working 24/7 in atrocious conditions just over six months to build the site, which is mainly constructed of reinforced concrete.

Thousands of workers, mostly prisoners of war, died during construction.

Originally, it was meant to be 216 metres in length and 131 metres in width, but the RAF discovered the site part-way through construction and destroyed the ongoing work using Tallboy bombs – but could not bring down the part already built.

The structure was meant to wreak havoc on the south coast of England and London, and was meant to fire the V1 and V2 bombs – the brainchild of famous German and space travel expert Werner Von Braun.

The site was also host to a liquid oxygen factory – meaning not only was it firing bombs but it could mass produce them.

It is hard to walk around the site without being engulfed by spinetingling goosebumps – amazed at the sheer size of the building but also horrified at what happened during construction, and what was meant to happen following completion.

There is a guided tour option of the site – or an “interactive museum” as our tour guide labelled it – and there are also audio tours where each part of the site is explained and a re-enactment of the allied bombings is played.

Following our tour of the Blokhaus, we checked into our hotel for the evening, the Château de Cocove.

It is a beautiful rustic hotel, nestled away in the countryside, and is of really high quality. The room was superb and the cuisine on offer was also of exceptionally high quality, providing the perfect base to kick back and relax.

The following morning, after a sumptuous breakfast, we were taken to La Capoule and the 3D Planetarium.

This is again another super-structure but this time in a dome-like shape, and was meant to fire V2 bombs on London in conjunction with Blockhaus d’Éperlecques.

Built on the side of a hill, this is a huge underground structure and was constructed as a preparation and launch site for the Nazis. It is around 42 metres deep, and is protected by a 5.5 metre thick, 72 metre in diameter dome roof.

La Capoule charts the historical and scientific stakes that were at play during the Second World War, including the development of bombs and the Nazi’s hidden ambition of space conquest, and also the suffering of people who were forced into helping the Nazis realise their goals.

There is also an amazing 3D planetarium, which transports you into the depths of the Milky Way galaxy and what we know about the universe today.

This museum, built for the same reason as the Blockhaus, is as intriguing as its counterpart but it offers a more in-depth look at what was happening in Northern France between 1939 and 1945 behind the scenes, whereas the Blockhaus presents the physical element of the war.

Following our tour, we were then whisked away for lunch at a lovely local restaurant before we went to the Museum at Ambleteuse.

For anyone who is an enthusiast about the war and in particular memorabilia, this is the place to go.

It is home to hundreds of mannequins, adorned in almost every uniform, of every rank of solider from every country that participated during the war. It is staggering the variety of the uniforms on display at the museum, and is a must for anyone who is interested in that aspect of the war. For those that aren’t, it still proves morbidly fascinating.

We then continued our tour of the area and travelled to the Todt Battery, which is again part of the Atlantic Wall.

Although smaller than Blockhaus d’Éperlecques and La Capoule, it is still of a vast scale, housing a machine room, the barrack rooms and a huge gun rooms and unlike the others, this is actually located on the coast, meaning you can actually see the white cliffs of Dover – a strange feeling for any Englishman to look back on their homeland from afar – and meant the German soldiers could see Dover when they were aiming at it.

The museum has reconstructed the design of the interior so that it mirrors what it would have looked like under German rule, and how officers and normal soldiers would have lived, with several thousand exhibits from the six-year period.

From there, we were taken to our hotel for the night, the La Ferme du Vert – a hotel again located in the countryside but this time next to a cheese factory – owned by the brother of the owner of the hotel.

The rooms were once again immaculately presented and were incredibly spacious – it is a hotel very popular with families - and the chef served a memorable meal of veal and fish, with several bottles of high quality white and red wine to wash it down with.

One of the great things about this hotel is that it is possible to buy cheese and view the cheese-making process at the factory – allowing guests a real insight into one of the most popular aspects of modern French life.

The next morning, we were taken to the Mimoyecques V3 Base.

This is a vast underground network of tunnels that was developed by the Nazis to form part of the Atlantic Wall to be an underground launch base for the V3 supergun.

It was a production and firing base for the bombs – with the gun aimed at London – and would have wreaked havoc on the capital had it been successful.

The tour of the site allows visitors to walk the underground tunnels and see where the guns would have fired from.

Following the Mimoyecques visit, we then made our way back to Calais for our return ferry and our tour guide took us on a slight tour to show the physical devastation that had been caused to the region during the war.

The surrounding countryside still bears the scars of war, riddled with craters from bombs that changed the landscape of France forever.

For any war enthusiast, or anyone wishing to pay their individual respects to those who were killed during the war because of the Nazi regime, the Pas-de-Calais area, with its wealth of museums and superb hotels, really is a great destination.

Getting there

P&O Ferries offers a choice of 23 crossings in each direction between Dover and Calais daily, so there’s always a departure time to suit.

Outbound there is a waiter service restaurant called The Brasserie and a club lounge, costing £12 per person each way, to provide a quiet space away from the main decks.

Crossing time is 90 minutes and fares for a car and all the passengers (up to nine people) are from £78 return. Full details at poferries.com or 08716 646464.