June 1950

VISIT TO PARIS Few boys can have packed more new experiences into the first week of the Easter holiday than the thirty-one boys who went to Paris.

They were across the Channel before many of their friends at school had reached their homes; and when they returned a week later they felt they had been away for months, and their minds were filled with memories of France. Most had never been abroad before, while some did not even know their London. Yet the boy who stepped round the corner at Victoria for his first glimpse of the Underground was soon at home in the Paris Metro; and he was better acquainted with Notre Dame than with Westminster Abbey.

The programme was a strenuous one, as the diary of the visit will show.

TUESDAY, 5TH APRIL. Excitement at the very start. An urgent call from British Railways brings the party rushing to the station; it had been booked on an earlier train than expected. All goes well. since the train leaves late; but there is another change of plan at Victoria. There are strikes at Dieppe and we are diverted via Folkestone-Boulogne. We are initiated into the vicissitudes of foreign travel and are no longer surprised when "Boulogne" turns out to be Calais Maritime.

After some delay we find our arrival is not unexpected and the journey to Paris proceeds smoothly. We notice the strangeness of the landscape, the many derelict factories, and the want of paint. Some boys try to calculate the speed of the train with watch and map.

Mr. Le Tocq points out the abundance of mistletoe on the trees. (Mr. Craven, ignorant townsman, had taken it for crows' nests.)

We arrive at our hotel in the evening, eat a welcome meal, and settle down for the night. The journey has taken about 17 hours.

WEDNESDAY. In the morning by Metro to the Eiffel Tower for a general view of Paris. In the afternoon we explore the Ile de la Cite, the Sainte-Chapelle and Notre Dame. We climb the towers and see the huge bell, "Marie Therese". It is still swung by human agency, by men driving four great pedals while clinging perilously to a horizontal bar. Cinema in the evening.

THURSDAY. To the Louvre. All too brief a visit for many of the boys. Some prefer the copy of "Mona Lisa" to the original. One youngster thinks she "looks as though she has just pulled a fast one".

We are joined at lunch by Oldroyd's pen-friend from Rouen, with his father and brother. In the afternoon to the 'Manufacture des Gobelins to see the craftsmen at work on their looms, making Gobelins, Beauvais. and La Savonnerie tapestries. They weave about a square metre of this beautiful work in the course of a year.

FRIDAY. An excursion by coach to Fontainebleau provides a welcome rest for tired feet. We pass the aerodrome at Orly, and 35