SCHOOL trips always linger in the memory - and that surely applies for a group of Colchester students who experienced an ill-fated trip to France in May 1968.
It’s certainly a tale that flies in the face of today’s rigorous health and safety policies.
As the cutting on this page testifies, the Gilberd School students and their teacher got stranded when one of the rear tyres on their minibus developed a fault.
Without a spare, they made it to the small town of Souillac.
However, the garages there did not have the right tyres in supply so ended up ordering them from the AA in Paris.
Read all about it - the newspaper cutting that reports the unsuccessful but eventful trip to France in 1968
An added problem was that they would take several days to arrive.
By this point, the group had no money and were reliant on charity for food and accommodation.
In fact, they could only get rooms for the girls, which left the boys sleeping in a field!
Their teacher tried to persuade a local priest to lend them the money to get home but, in the end, a tourist office helped out.
The tyres eventually arrived in Souillac the day after the group made it back to the UK.
Dramatic trip - the students were from the Gilberd School, pictured here and below at around the time of the trip in May 1968
The teacher then had to go back to collect the minibus.
Jonathan Moran found the cutting, as part of his project digitising old pictures of the Gilberd.
He said: “More than half a century after these events occurred, we can look back and smile about them now.
“However, I’m sure at the time it must have been a frightening experience for both students and teachers.
“Almost all the problems that arose could be resolved fairly easily today, but back in 1968 it obviously wasn’t as simple to move money and resources quickly over large distances.
“It’s also fair to say there are one or two health and safety issues that would definitely have been flagged up today!”
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