About Cooper's Waterloo Tours
Established in 2000 we are a family business offering professional bespoke and scheduled tours to the battlefields of Europe.
We guide organisations, families, small groups and individuals on scheduled and bespoke tours to the First and Second World War battlefields. Our speciality lies in the bloody and dramatic campaigns of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington at the turn of the 19th century.
Battlefield Tours should focus the guest and deliver a real understanding and perspective of the terrain in order to place relative perceived history into context. A good guide emulates the sport skill of orienteering, always to orientate and relate from ground to map and seldom the reverse. Histories are manmade and can be fallible, battlefield terrain is neither and seldom is radically altered.
By placing the battle in context on the ground which influenced its outcome we can then relate the personal stories of those who fought upon it.
This sequence, and an engaging guide who delivers what he/she believes is the truth, is what brings history alive. Only then is a rewarding, educational, memorable and friendly venture experienced.
Advice to anyone wanting to be guided on a battlefield is to ask of the tour provider 'WHO IS MY GUIDE?' Touring battlefields successfully today primarily depends on one factor… 'The quality of the Guide'. The profession of battlefield guiding, its craft and the commitment to entertain and educate are all responsibilities of the Guide.
No Guide is perfect, however if they have been awarded the 'Badge' of the International Guild of Battlefield Guides by experiencing the journey of the Validation process then those looking for a Guide can rest assured that a 'Badged Guide' has been recognised by his/her peers as having met the guiding standard now recognised by ETOA and many leading tour operators.
Graeme Cooper endeavours to impress upon his guests the value and nature of the topography of a battlefield, but may also to ensure that they leave with a true sense of understanding of the battle and of the personal experiences of those who endured. Graeme, a keen outdoors man led his first tour in 1973. It is with this background that he qualifies to lead his own distinctively styled tours. The aim of any tour should be to absorb the guest in the compelling battles of the historic era of their choice.