Overseas Trips, 1968

Trip to West Germany, April 1968

Although recorded by the headmaster, there are no details of this trip.

Recollections of the 1968 school trip to Austria (written in 2019 by former pupil Paul Carter).

“Over the years that I was at St Gregory’s the school organised a number of trips to the Continent, usually in the Easter and Whit holidays. This was the only one I went on and the schedule was something like this:

• Depart from outside St Gregory’s school using a local coach firm.

• We made our way over the Pennines to Immingham for the ferry to Holland. I am not sure if we disembarked in Amsterdam or Rotterdam. I remember that I shared a cabin of four berths, although some boys were not so lucky and had to sleep in reclining seats in the public areas.

• From Holland we made our way into northern West Germany where we then drove on the autobahn to a village somewhere much further south for an overnight stop. My recollection is that at least some of us stayed in the houses of local families.

• From there we drove to Salzburg in Austria, which was our base for the holiday. I remember that it was a pension-type hotel where we shared rooms which slept a minimum of four persons.

For most of us, aged 13 or 14, it was our first holiday outside of the UK. My recollection is that we were accompanied by two or three teachers, although the only name I can actually recall is Mr J. O’Connor.

Sleeping in that house in the small village in southern West Germany was also my first experience of a duvet. We thought that you had to sleep inside it until told otherwise by the family.

In Salzburg we were given quite a lot of free time for sightseeing although there were some organised trips:

• Salzbergwerk Dürrnberg-Hallein. This was an underground salt mine to the south of Salzburg, where we were kitted out with white protective jackets and dark over-trousers (see photo). The train that moved us around the mine was electric and it ran on a narrow gauge and pulled three or four open carriages. We descended into the mountain via tunnels and steps and then on long, steep wooden slides between levels where the speed of our descent was controlled by the guide holding onto a thick rope. There was also an underground lake which we crossed on a small boat before emerging.

• The Grossglockner mountain and glacier, Austria’s highest mountain, where the peak is permanently covered in snow and ice. I remember leaving Salzburg on a warm sunny day and then throwing snowballs and sliding on ice just a few hours later.

• We also visited a historic house somewhere in the region that had been built by one of the kings (possibly Ludwig). It was a maze of water follies and traps where water would gush from stone seats just after you had sat down, or from holes in the roof of arches that you were passing under.

• In Salzburg, during one evening, we all went to a hall where there was some local music and food.

On our free days in Salzburg we wandered round the city, some of us remembering The Sound of Music which had been released only three years earlier. The image of a gang of kids from Manchester running through the Residence Square in Salzburg singing one of the songs from that film will remain with me for ever.

Another memory is of a visit to the Dachau concentration camp, which was located about ten miles north-west of Munich. We spent half a day there being shown around the camp.

On the return journey home, we stayed overnight in a small village in the Black Forest. Again, we stayed with local families and were woken by the sound of bells from a church that was less than a hundred yards away. It must have been a Sunday as I remember that we attended Mass.

The remainder of the journey was more or less identical to the outward leg and we finally arrived back in Manchester extremely tired and a lot less boisterous than when we had left.”

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