In the footsteps of wartime heroes in western France

The Frankton Trail begins at Blaye

(Image credit: Steve Allen Photo / Getty Images)

On the night of 7 December 1942, a submarine carrying ten Royal Marines commandos arrived off the coast of western France. Its mission was to blow up six to 12 cargo ships supplying the German war effort that were docked in Bordeaux, 100km up the Gironde estuary, then escape to Spain with the aid of the French Resistance. Operation Frankton was deeply perilous, and only two of the men made it, said Duncan Craig in the Financial Times. Sixty years later, a poignant walking and cycling path that follows their route through occupied France was opened. Known as the Frankton Trail, it winds through an "idyllic" region, and is "part hike, part homage".

The men had brought with them plywood kayaks, or "cockles". Their plan was to paddle up the estuary over several nights, attach limpet mines to the ships, and then repair to nearby Blaye, from which they would strike out on foot for their rendezvous with the Resistance in Ruffec, 80-odd miles away. However, two of the men succumbed to hypothermia after capsizing in the estuary's "notorious" tidal rips, and six were captured and executed. It is the overland route taken by the survivors – Bill Sparks and Major Herbert "Blondie" Hasler – from Blaye to Ruffec that the Frankton Trail follows, but before heading there, I spent a few days beside the sea, walking on the fabulously wild and beautiful coastline here, and visiting the "affecting" memorials to the operation that have been erected in Montalivet and Royan.

From Blaye, the trail follows peaceful lanes through sleepy stone-built villages, passing the cottage whose "theatrically volatile" owner gave sustenance to Sparks and Hasler. They had only managed to severely damage four ships (two of which sank), but the sheer audacity of the raid (on which the 1955 film, "The Cockleshell Heroes", was based) emboldened the Allies so greatly that Churchill claimed that it had shortened the war by six months.