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Hi John, 

A few months ago, you rashly wrote that you would welcome some reminiscences of the EGS trips my late father led in the 1950s. They are in four episodes, as I rarely get time to devote several hours to my I-pad without having to attend to something more urgent.

Anyway, here goes.


Episode 1


From 1953 to 1960 I had the good fortune to accompany 7 trips Dad led, largely to Switzerland, though I missed out on the 1955 trip to the Costa Brava, Spanish kitchen hygiene being thought too primitive for my 12 -year -old digestive system. From what I heard later, this was a wise decision. After the travails of the journey both ways in 1953 it was a miracle that he ever took another group further than Kew Gardens! 

The problem was a strike on the French railways, which meant that once we arrived in Dieppe, onward transport was in doubt. A train designated to go to Paris was standing before us, but its departure time was uncertain, as was any onward train from Paris to the Swiss border. Dad decided to hire a coach, and while we waited for it, we watched with mixed feelings the departure of the train. The coach duly materialised and it took us 14 hours to reach Vallorbe on the Swiss border. The journey, punctuated only by a comfort stop at Beauvais, at which everyone ate their food provided by parents, was boring, uneventful and largely sleepless.

Any stress Dad may have felt was alleviated the next day when he read a newspaper report that the train we had seen leave Dieppe had taken 6 hours longer than scheduled to reach Paris, every level crossing en route needing to be opened by passengers, who then had to run after the train and reboard it!

The party stayed some 10 days in the Lycée Jaccard, a boarding school beside Lake Geneva on the outskirts of Lausanne for the sons of the very rich, including a cousin of the Shah of Iran, most of whom had gone home for the summer. I remember two all-day excursions to the St. Bernard Pass into Italy, and up the Rochers de Naye mountain, the latter followed by a visit to Chillon Castle, at which Dad told the group about the poem Byron had written on some unfortunate incarcerated there. We also had half day trips to Geneva to see the Palais des Nations, HQ of the ill-fated League of Nations, and the Reformation monument, and across the lake to Evian, a spa resort in France. 

The weather throughout was sunny and warm, and mornings were usually spent swimming in the lake, which, being glacially fed, was decidedly cold. Walks to local places of interest took up some free afternoons. The weather  on the 1954 trip to the same destination was markedly poorer, and I remember it pouring with rain all the way up to the St. Bernard  Pass and back, seeing alpine cows looming out of the mist at the top of the Rochers de Naye, a thunderstorm in Geneva, unremitting cloudiness  over the two days we spent in Paris on the way back,  plus, to cap it all, the roughest of over 50 channel crossings I have experienced.

Whom do I remember of the other participants? The other teachers were Peter Powrie, a Geography master, whom Dad had actually taught at East Sheen Grammar School some 10 years earlier, and a young bespectacled Science teacher called, I think, Eason, who oversaw the swimming and took part in some raucous sing-songs beside the lake. Among the boys from 1953 I can only put faces to the names of Heathcoate, Lush, Trott, Watkins, Hurrle, Leamy, Worsley, Julian, who sported a very modern haircut, Bond, who was a proficient jazz pianist and of course David Cocker and his friend Gainsbury, with whom I was roomed, and who, aged 15 themselves, were remarkably forbearing towards a loquacious 10-year-old, whose main obsessions were cricket and Swiss paddle steamers. An abiding memory is listening on the long wave radio in my parents' room one rare wet afternoon to the crackly commentary from The Oval as, after four draws, we finally regained The Ashes.

In 1954 I was roomed with Brian Saberton and his friend Smith, who were likewise very tolerant, but I also recall Scott, who was fond of the Lycée’s two Weimaraner dogs, Carnall, Wilson and Hopkins, to whom I am eternally grateful for teaching me an unforgettable lesson, not to bore the pants off those who do not share my enthusiasms. As mentioned, I was mad on Lake Geneva's paddle steamers, and had acquired rather too much knowledge about their history, etc.  On one excursion, as our coach drove alongside the lake, we passed a steamer and a voice, that of Hopkins, rang out from the back, "Warwick, when did the second mate last wash his feet?" Lesson learned.

The 1953 return journey was much worse than the outbound. Dad had been told that the only guaranteed strike-proof way home was on the Basle-Calais Express, as the drivers were part of a different trade union agreement dating back to before 1918, when most of the route had been part of Germany. However, after about 12 hours on the very slow and crowded "express", we were told that saboteurs had torn up the track and derailed the train coming the other way. We were diverted to Brussels, and finally got to Ostend 20 hours after leaving Basle.

There we discovered that the seasonal night ferry had ceased to operate a week previously, so Dad found himself with 40 very tired and hungry boys with nowhere to spend the night. Luckily one boy was a YHA member, we located the Ostend Youth Hostel and they put us on to a nearby hotel that, at a pinch, could put us all up. At a pinch, indeed, as one room had to take 8 boys, including one called Dixon in a cot! On the tram out to this hotel, my mother managed to leave behind the bag containing our passports, and even more important, 2 foreign Dinky Toy cars we had bought for my younger brother Peter (OE).

Next morning, while Messrs Powrie and Eason took the boys to the ferry, Dad, Mum and I took a taxi to the British Consulate, got the Consul out of his bath to issue emergency passports, only to find, as we reached the port 5 minutes before the ferry departed, that the tram conductor had found our bag and with great presence of mind had taken it to the port rather than obeying regulations and handing it in at his depot. I hope Peter still has the Dinky Toys.


Episode 2


As mentioned, I missed out on the 1955 Spain trip, but August 1956 saw Dad leading a group of first and second year boys to Bouillon in French-speaking Southern Belgium. From a personal perspective, this and the 1957-8 trips to Wilderswil were the most enjoyable, as the groups were of my own age, and I found myself being very much more a participant than an observer. The other teacher was Michael Salter, a French specialist, who for several years put on a highly successful Soiree Francaise which gave boys in the lower years a chance to hone their acting skills in a sort of light-hearted revue in which it appeared not to matter too much if things went wrong. Dad and Michael became good friends and stayed in touch long after both left EGS.

The trip involved overnight stops in Blankenberge near Ostend in each direction, Bouillon being a 6-hour coach journey from the coast. Nearly all days in Bouillon were taken up with an excursion as the town, while pretty and boasting a picturesque castle overlooking the river Semois, afforded little in the way of activities or facilities to keep 40 12-13 year olds out of mischief. We visited Luxembourg, where the city guide told us that Good King Wenceslas was really bad, as well as a wine cellar, and chalked up a new country with a short walk into Germany. A second trip took us into France, while another involved visiting Orval Abbey, rebuilt only a few years previously through charitable donations. We all understood we were in a very holy place and afforded due reverence. So successful were Messrs Hillman and Salter in concealing the Abbey's raison d'etre that it was several years later, married and condemned to supermarket Saturday shopping, that I saw the name Orval on a beer bottle and the penny dropped as to why we might have gone there.

It was on the train to Dover that I sat opposite and first met John Oxley, who seemed very tall and mature, who was also to come on the 1957 Wilderswil trip, as were Roger Waterson and Brian Halsall, sadly, I am told, no longer with us. Others I remember from the second year include George Rayer, Dennis Field, with whom I was roomed along with one of two Martins, the second of whom was actually Martyn, plus two first year boys, Minors and Cartwright, both of whom was as mad on cricket as I was, so that as we had once again just won an Ashes series we had much to talk about. The hotel has left no memories, except that chips were served at most meals, and that on one occasion the main course included horse meat, which we were only told after clearing our plates.

Bouillon was in the middle of the Ardennes range of hills, which had seen fierce fighting in 1944-5, and we all learned how history could actually be quite recent when we visited War Museums close by, but all too soon It was time for the long haul back on the coach. However, the journey was broken by lunch in Brussels and a visit to the new Atomium, which had recently featured as the centrepiece of the Brussels Expo.

The next three Swiss trips all took place in the Easter holiday, and the 1957 one began inauspiciously with another French railway strike. This time Dad's Plan B was put into action before we left, and involved going via Ostend rather than Calais, then through Germany along the Rhine from Cologne to Basle. This, however, meant leaving Victoria 3 hours earlier. I can only assume that back in 1957 not all homes had a landline telephone, let alone a mobile, because, in order that everybody should know the change of plan, I was dispatched on a 4-hour journey involving some 6 buses, to visit personally the homes of four of the most distantly domiciled boys to give them the revised joining instructions. One called Bryant lived on Whitton Avenue, and disaster was averted when his father asked what time his son should be at Waterloo, which I was able to correct. Long walks took me to the homes of Brian Halsall and Derek Keene in Northolt, and another bus to Yeading, where a fourth boy lived. Presumably everyone else was informed by telephone, but that evening I definitely felt in need of a holiday, and the next morning all turned up on time at Victoria.

I remember little of the actual journey, except that, as we sped across the flat bit of Switzerland South of Basle, Roger Waterson observed that he was sure we had been through Bahnhof before. The joys of a classical education! The participants were all third years apart from four from the year above, and the other teacher was Ron Thornhill, who taught Chemistry, and who, if his mimics among the group are to be believed, was given to Corporal Jones - type histrionics when experiments looked like going wrong. Again, he and Dad stayed in touch after Dad left EGS, but he sadly died suddenly at the age of 58.


Episode 3


The two trips to Wilderswil in the Bernese Oberland were spent at the very comfortable Kurhaus Belmont Hotel, where we had good food and plenty of it. There was an inexhaustible supply of excellent sauté potatoes, so much so that "More potato?" In a Schweitzer Deutsch accent hung around in our family for years. Asparagus featured a lot, something not often seen in post-war Britain, and new certainly to me. Happily, I loved it, and the boy next to me at dinners, who, I think, was called O'Neill, hated it, so I got all his too. The hotel dining room offered a great view of the immediate area's highest mountain, the Jungfrau, when weather allowed you to see it, and one unforgettable memory was the sight one evening of the Alpenglut, the brilliant and slowly fading reflection of the setting sun's light on the snowfield and peak itself. It only happened once in 1957 and never in 1958.

Dad had a habit of checking the next day's weather forecast with the local Tourist Office, before booking the excursions. The Swiss in those days so cherished juvenile tourism, that they let you make a group reservation as late as the night before, even to the extent of putting an extra carriage on the train. In 1957, computer didn't say "no". As a result, on a holiday of near perfect weather, we had rain on our only free day, went to the cities of Thun and Bern on cloudy days, and did 5 trips to river gorges, waterfalls or up mountains by various ingenious conveyances on perfect sunny days. Highlight was the trip on three trains of differing gauges to the 11,333 feet high Jungfraujoch on a cloudless Easter Monday. John Oxley described this well in his account of his EGS school days, but almost as spectacular were the chair-lift rides above Grindelwald and to the Oeschinensee, a small lake surrounded by and reflecting a circle of steep snow-covered peaks.

Apart from names already mentioned, I remember Mike Levermore and his friend Meanwell, Brereton, Marriage, Victor Boulter, Macey, who irritated Dad by asking him why there were no fish and chip shops in Wilderswil, Freddie Bowden, on whom an unkind prank was played one dinner time, involving multiple drinks of water and a swiftly accelerating exit. I was roomed with Derek Keene, whose father was an amateur archaeologist, and who himself became a distinguished history professor. For some reason we were allocated a rare room on the ground floor. Because the weather was mild, we slept with a window open and more than once had nocturnal visits by the hotel's friendly tabby cat. Derek, if I remember correctly, was into Art in a big way, and when we had a free afternoon in Bern, retaliated to my insistence on visiting the Alpine Museum by dragging me round the Fine Art Museum. By a strange irony my own interest in Art was awakened by an inspiring teacher at my own school, who mis-used some Lower Sixth English lessons to teach us Art History, who also happened to be the son of EGS's first headmaster, Mr Marsh, who tragically drowned. 

As a postscript to this holiday, I have a photo taken of the group on the entrance steps to the Kurhaus Belmont. Most of those I can remember are in it, but there are only 22 boys shown. Freddie Bowden is not there, and I am sure the group was nearer 40 in size. Was there a second photo showing the rest because the flight of steps could not accommodate everyone, or have I got it all wrong?  Any ideas gratefully accepted.

The 1958 trip had no travel disruptions, at least not going there and back. Sadly, however, the weather was poor throughout. Easter was earlier that year and the holiday took place some 10 days earlier. Indeed, the only time we saw the Jungfrau was at Wilderswil Station as we waited for the train home. The trip up to the Jungfraujoch was cancelled because it was never clear enough to see the view, and I seem to remember Dad refunding parents the princely sum of 27 shillings and 6 pence, which was the cost of the trip for juveniles in a group of more than 6. The last time I looked, it now costs £79. We did the other trips, accompanied by either unremitting cloud at best, or snow.

 On the Oeschinensee trip we went up the chairlift, but 5 minutes into the 20-minute walk through the woods to the lake it began to snow lightly. Dad almost at once decided to abort the walk. With 15-year-old arrogance I quietly argued against abandoning the trip but was firmly told to do as I was told, and we duly ate our packed lunches on Kandersteg Station and returned to Wilderswil. Only 58 years later did I discover the reason for Dad's caution, in a description in The Guardian of how a party of schoolboys from Strand Grammar School in Brixton, where Dad had himself been educated in the 1920s, had been caught in a blizzard in the Black Forest, got lost, and suffered 4 fatalities. (For the full harrowing account, look up Kenneth Keast, who led the group, online. Keast was actually a friend of Dad’s, both being active Old Strandian members.) Even now, the caution was misplaced, as there was only one path to and from the lake, so we could not, I think, have got lost, and, as Dad had found out from the weather forecast, no serious snow was expected or indeed happened that day.

One other event made that holiday memorable. In the hotel were also staying a party of GIRLS, from a grammar school, I think, Weston-Super-Mare. Their accompanying teachers had told them not to fraternise. I cannot remember any such advice from Dad to his charges, but the inevitable eventually occurred and Dad was on the receiving end of a complaint one evening, not merely of harassment by one or more boys, but of drink-induced harassment. As a result, after bedtime we were all fetched from our bedrooms in pyjamas and dressing gowns for the obligatory stern lecture. A room search had revealed all." We found a bottle of Kirsch in your bedroom, Duffy" announced Dad. "I have it here" intoned Ron Thornhill, holding it up with distaste as if it was an evil smelling compound from his chemistry lab. I wish I could remember if it was full and destined for a grateful parent, or the half-empty architect of earlier misdeeds, but sadly I can't.  Suffice it to say that a lad called Nicholls was fingered rightly or wrongly as chief culprit and banned from an excursion or two, and any other contraband was confiscated until our return home.

Apart from those participants mentioned, l also remember Alan Harrison, who had been in my primary school class, and who shared a room with my brother Peter, and a boy called Thomson, on whom I played a cruel trick on Spiez Station when he urgently needed the toilet but didn’t know the German for "gentlemen". I have since been reminded that Victor Boulter was on that trip as well as the 1957 one, but he must have been so well behaved that I cannot remember him. I was roomed with Roger Waterson, also on his second Wilderswil trip, and Alistair Jones, both were into music, and were very congenial company, and I was delighted, following Alistair's recent recollections of his time at EGS, to renew our acquaintanceship after 63 years. Dad seems to have been a remarkable judge of character, as the recent photo of 1960-1 Prefects includes all 5 with whom he roomed me on the 1956-7-8 holidays, and any influence my presence may have had on them does not seem to have stood in their way. 


Episode 4


1959 saw Dad heading south of the Alps after the previous year's ordeal by snow at Easter, to Lugano in Italian Switzerland. The group was largely of third years, I think, and for the first time we had the luxury of a through carriage emblazoned Calais- Milano which meant no bleary-eyed breakfast of fresh rolls and cherry jam on Basle Station, as in earlier years.

This was the second trip my brother Peter went on, but sadly on Day 3 he went down with German Measles and had to fly home after the rest of the party with Dad. Ron Thornhill, the other teacher, having greatness thrust upon him, shepherded us all home.

The trip involved three full day excursions, all into Italy. The most memorable was to Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore, a small island owned by the wealthy Borromea family, who had built a palace full of ostentatious glassware and a bizarre garden notable for weird statuary and screeching peacocks. The conductor Toscanini, who died three years previously, we were told, owned a similar island close by. Other trips took us to Lake Como, much prettier, and Milan, which, the fabulous cathedral apart, seemed crowded and noisy. We visited the suburban church, in whose refectory Leonardo's Last Supper was gently disintegrating on a wall before its overdue restoration, and Dad derived much amusement from reading afterwards in an essay how impressed the writer had been by Leonardo's Muriel. Much spare time was spent in pedalos on Lake Lugano, but we also visited the picture postcard villages of Gandria and Morcote. 

 I remember few of the participants, though for some reason the names of Ingram, Reisman and Starmer ring faint bells, as well as Sadler, poor chap, who was sick on the coach half -way to Milan.  Breakfasts were enlivened each morning by the passage through the dining area of an exotically underdressed young woman, and the hotel juke box was for ever playing Elvis Presley's "I got stung". Indeed, when a lake steamer called Elvezia -Italian for Switzerland- appeared to take us to Morcote, some idiot asked Dad if it was named after Elvis. His reply was worthy of Captain Mainwaring.

The last trip of Dad's that I went on was the repeat trip to Bouillon in 1960. This involved first and second year boys, and as I was by then 17, any role I had was more supervisory than participatory. Ron Thornhill again came too, but I remember little apart from a handful of names, Bryant, Cox, Driver, Stuart, Green, and Christopher Lewis, who happened to live in our road in Northfields. What the others did for me to remember them I have no idea. Indeed, on reflection, I wonder whether after 60-odd years I should apologise to those I can remember rather than the 250 or more whom I have forgotten.

Other trips Dad led include one to Lake Lucerne in 1960, which I missed out on as I was supposed to be working hard for my A-levels, one to Zell am See in Austria in 1961, by which time I was myself briefly teaching prior to University, and a further Easter trip to Belgium in April 1961. My brother Peter went on two of these, according to the postcards I still have, so he may be able to fill these gaps. (He'll love me for this!). I shall be for ever grateful for the love of travel engendered by these trips. In turn I have driven round large chunks of Spain, Italy, Malaysia, New Zealand, Mexico and the USA, and when I drop my own children and their families off at an airport, I always wonder if they would have inherited my wanderlust had it not been for those adolescent journeys I was privileged to enjoy.

As postscript, Dad left EGS in 1962 to take up a position in Sussex. He never again took groups from his own school but led several parties from schools whose teachers lacked the experience of languages or confidence themselves to lead abroad. According to postcards I still have, he did this until 1970. He retired in 1975 and devoted much of his spare time to gardening and crossword solving and twice came second, to a professional lexicographer, in The Times Cutty Sark annual Crossword competition, which kept us in whisky for years, and passed away in 1990.   


Regards

Warwick Hillman




School Trips with Mr Hillman (Head of English)


As recalled by his son, Warwick Hillman


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