SCHOOL trips abroad have become an accepted extracurricular part of UK education.
But there was a time, well within living memory, when pupils’ supervised travel to distant parts simply hadn’t been thought of.
One of the first – probably in Huddersfield and possibly in the UK, though we stand to be corrected if readers know otherwise – was Longley Hall School’s sixth form’s journey to Switzerland in 1954.
Marcia Kemp, now the editor of the Huddersfield and District Family History Society journal, was one of the lucky dozen or so pupils to be included on the trip.
“The geography and French teachers got together to organise the trip,” Marcia recalls.
“It was a journey by train to London, a visit to the House of Commons and Big Ben, followed by a boat across the Channel and a trip on an austere French train to Montreux in Switzerland.”
The pupils and teachers stayed at a hotel in Montreux on Lake Geneva, during which they ventured out for a dip in the lake and a visit to Chateau de Chillon where Lord Byron wrote his poem The Prisoner of Chillon.
“The captain of the boat on the lake refused to take payment from us as we were English,” said Marcia. “It was just after the war and we were a bit more popular then.”
There followed a train ride up to a glacier on the Jungfrau and a chair lift ride to the top, before the party moved on to another part of Switzerland for a couple of days
“We returned in a way unheard of in those days – it was a flight from Basel on a Transair Airlines Dakota airplane to Croydon Airport.
“It would be interesting to find out what has happened to all the girls. I know one of them who was called Meryl Rogers and she married and became Meryl Goodall of Goodall Caravans at Crosland Moor,” said Marcia.
If anybody can name the pupils, or has pictures of the trip, let us know.
