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The day finally came arrived at Blackpool North Station on a sunny Saturday lunch time, laden down with rucksacks, sleeping bags, pots and pans and also a plentiful supply of coffee and packet soups. We had chosen art unfortunate day to start our lnterail holiday, as we had to fight our way through the Manchester United football supporters to catch our train to London. Having started our traumatic journey to the Hook of Holland every thing went calmly until we reached Harwich, where to our horror we found out that we should have purchased our boat tickets in London. However after having got them at Harwich we eventually arrived in our first-class cabin down a maze of corridors, after having tramped through the first class restaurant. You can imagine the sort of looks we got!
And so our great adventure had begun. We woke up expecting to see sunshine as we looked out of our portholes on the Hook of Holland quayside. All that greeted us was a drizzling rain which covered a landscape of oilrigs and filthy old tankers. We were not to he disheartened, however, and boarded the trainwhich would take us to Cologne, and still the rain the rain continues.......... Our, accommodation in Cologne was at a Youth Hostel which was very pleasant, but after two days we decided to move on. On the morning of our departure the weather seemed to clear, and this perhaps was a lucky omen for in the station we were fortunate to meet a German Industralist who befriended us. It is almost impossible to imagine that anyone could be so generous, but being a native of the German Rhineland he showed us places which we would never have seen by ourselves. After this delightful man had returned to Cologne we carried on down the Rhine to St Goar, when, we found to our surprise that a party from Blackpool Collegiate Grammar School had just stayed at the same Youth Hostel.
The bad weather began again and continued throughout our visits to Trier and Heidelberg. So we decided to leave Germany and Go on to Switzerland to seek better weather
We were lucky to have friends in Basle, Switzerland, and arrived at a little station in Rheinfelden to find the sun shining. We staved in Rheinfelden for four days using it as a base. From our base we visited lnterlaken and Wengen, two beautiful Swiss mountain villages. However, our stay in Basle soon ended and we carried on into Geneva, spending the day there and admiring the enormous and beautiful man-made fountain. In the evening we caught the overnight train from Geneva to Nice, and this seemed to he the turning point for the weather remained fine for the rest of the holiday.
Nice in the middle of August was a big change from the tranquility of the Swiss Mountain villages and we soon moved on to Menton. With Monte Carlo being a short train journey away we could not help but visit this alluring and famous place.
In Monte Carlo we met this year's Head Boy, Robert Richmond and his friend. Johnathan Hunt, as we had arranged before we had embarked on our journey. It was a very pleasant change to meet somebody from home after two weeks of living with foriengers
After our stay in the South of Prance we travelled with Robert and Johnathan up to Luxembourg where, after sad farewells, we continued our journey to Paris. In Paris we followed the usual tourist tracks after having found a clean and cheap hotel in the suburbs. Paris in the season was disappointing, and even the trip up the Eiffel Tower proved disastrous when one of us fainted at the top and was unable to benfit from the magnificent view.
On our departure from Paris we were fortunate because we had chosen the rush hour, and many people, Parisians particularv, will not forget the morning when, they were stabbed by kettles and hit with frying-pans as we rushed through the tubes to Montparnasse to catch our train to St. Malo in Brittany.
The Youth Hostel at St. Malo was the best we had come across, and our stay there proved to be very relaxing after our hectic. Travelling through Europe. Here after out careful budgeting through the earlier part of the month - we found we had enough money to buy food from the local supermarket. This made many of our fellow hostellers, whose staple a diet seemed to be bread and cheese, very envious. After four days sunbathing on the relatively deserted beach and swimmimg the clear, azure seas, unfortunately our holiday came to its end.
On the morning of our departure the rain came and so we were glad to be leaving. We travelled all day having to pass through Paris once again and arrived home in Preston at 4 A.M. the following morning.
We thoroughly enjoyed the holiday and it is an experience we will never forget. When we left England August 3rd 1974 the interail cost £38 but now in February 1975 the price has rise to £49. However we would recommend anyone to use this form of travel which allows people to see as many as 19 different countries, as long as you are under 21, in one month. It might seem expensive but for a months holiday traveling wherever we wanted and living and eating well, we found it very worthwhile.
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