TODAY, when foreign holidays are as routine as popping to the supermarket – providing, of course, a fire hasn’t broken out at an electricity substation supplying Heathrow airport – you tend to forget the excitement the idea of 'going abroad' generated for families in the 1950s and 60s.

Those were the days when most passenger aircraft still had propellers, passports were not commonplace and, if I remember correctly (not a given), you needed to go to the bank to buy foreign currency.

The first bureau de change did not open until the mid-1970s.

But years ago Worcester historian, the late Bill Gwilliam, compiled several photo albums of those long ago and more simple, and probably more exciting, days when he led school trips to the continent.

In the 1950s Bill was a teacher at Christopher Whitehead Boys Secondary in St John’s, Worcester, and he organised summer trips to Switzerland for pupils.

One such Swiss trip took place in August 1952 and was well documented by form master Gwilliam whose party included 27 boys plus headmaster Bill Bourne and his wife Muriel.

It was to the village of Weissenburg, near the town of Spiez on Lake Thun.

Bill G wrote: “ Weissenburg proved to be a lovely location. It lay on the banks of the Simme River surrounded by snow-topped mountains.”

Under one of the photographs he took, Bill listed the surnames of most of the Christopher Whitehead boys on the trip - Collins. Clayton, Walsh, Dorricott, Udall, Allen, Biddle, Hall, Whittaker, Poulton, Poole, Penlington, Castledine, Yapp, Whittle, Fildes, Ford, Brown, Parker, Wilkinson, Dixon, Hughes, Challenger, Jefferies and Bourne.

The following summer he took another party of boys to the same place and this time among the group was a young Michael Grundy.

'Grund' went on to become a legendary member of this newspaper’s editorial staff, winning several awards for his fine journalism.

Sadly, Mike died last year and his funeral was at Worcester Cathedral.

He later wrote of his 1953 adventure: “It was a memorable holiday, particularly as it was the first time most of us 15 and 16-year-olds had been abroad.

"This time as well as Bill Gwilliam, the party included teachers Bruce Jenkins and his wife and Eric Hooper and his mother.”

Bill also compiled a photo album of a summer holiday to Paris he organised for Christopher Whitehead boys in 1951.

Presumably the Moulin Rouge was off the itinerary but all the same it wasn’t a bad locale for your first foreign adventure.

In addition to his own exploits, Bill also managed to acquire an album of a trip St John’s Boys School made to Holland in 1957.

This was compiled by the school’s headmaster Ken Langley and with scholarly attention to detail featured two pages with the passport photographs of all 38 pupils who went.

Sadly, as with the Swiss holidays, there are no words about what actually happened.

Suffice to say, everyone came back. No one disappeared into a random red light district.

The party, accompanied by eight adults, travelled by train to Harwich, ferry to the Hook of Holland and then by coach to its base for seven days, the International Hostel in the resort of Scheveningen.

Excursions then went out to Amsterdam, Delft, The Hague, Rotterdam and Haarlem. 

That’s Haarlem, North Holland, not Harlem, New York City, which is probably where Mr Hedges’ class of 5C from 1970s sit-com Please Sir would have ended up.