Patrons Mike Tindall and Nick Knowles join our charity war walk as Rugby for Heroes marks the anniversary of the Normandy Landings.

This June, Rugby for Heroes Patrons Mike Tindall and Nick Knowles will join the charity’s New Forest War Walk as we remember the fallen.

Commemorations this year will look quite different due to the restrictions of Covid-19, but as a military charity it is important that we mark this event.

The charity’s 26-mile war walk will take in some of the New Forests’ military sites and memorials as the team trek for two days across this unique landscape.

At the heart of the New Forest, Brockenhurst became a base for Indian and New Zealand troops during WWI with a hospital being established there. The team will pay their respects as they lay a wreath of remembrance at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission graves at St Nicholas Church, the biggest concentration of New Zealand graves outside of London. We will sign the Visitors Book, just as the 1935 All Blacks did.

From gunpowder factories to airfields, the New Forest was at the heart of Britain’s war efforts in WWI and WWII. Its position on the South Coast, close to the Solent and the military bases on the Salisbury Plain, made it a hive of wartime activity. The trek will end at Lepe on the Solent, where the remnants of the DDay preparations on the beach will remind us of the world changing events that occurred there 77 years ago.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning. We will remember them.

#RugbyRemembers.

If you would like to support the Rugby for Heroes team, you can donate here