The school Geography Master definitely had the travel bug with a particular liking for the Alps, and he was a great ambassador for Oswestry School on his many trips abroad. Being multilingual, John was a natural choice to help lead yearly trips to the continent and he delighted in planning routes by train throughout Europe. 

The school trip to Bavaria in 1958
    
 (Back L to R) Berry, Charles, Cobber Walton, Twanny Hughes, Scorer, Prestwich, Sharples, Greves, Pickup, Burton
 (Front L to R) Beddows, George Roberts-Jones, Hotel Rep, J F Tilley, Mitchell

My first ever trip abroad was with the school party in 1958 which was led by JFT and Mr Mitchell and they are pictured in the above photograph outside our hotel. About half the boys in the photograph were my classmates and we all got on famously. This very diverse set of characters included Cobber the clown and Twanny Hughes the athlete, who should have graced the tracks of the Olympic games, having beaten Robbie Brightwell several times in the years leading up to Tokyo 1964 (Brightwell won Silver, taking the final leg of the 4x400m, but could only finish 4th in the individual race).

Photograph to the left: Robbie Brightwell and Ann Packer - the golden couple.

Grevo, the academic Head Boy, and Sharps, the incurable romantic, were also  members of our group and my friend George, the incorrigible flirt, can be seen crouching strategically alongside a female member of the hotel staff whilst clutching a Health and Efficiency magazine. As for myself, well, I was there with my codpiece and quill to record the highs and lows of our wonderful adventure. The base for our holiday was a pretty little village called Berchtesgaden which was situated deep in Southern Bavaria close to the Austrian border and not far from the shores of beautiful Lake Konigsee. The area harboured a dark and sinister past because of its connections to the Hitler hierarchy and there were still pockets of support for the Nazi Party even after denazification.

View of Konigsee from a mountain road

The greater part of our journey to Munich and the far south of Bavaria took place by train and overnighting on a German sleeper train in 1958, so soon after the end of the war, was a new and exciting experience for me. Just over a decade had passed since the might of the German industrial powerhouse had been decimated by allied bombing under the leadership of Bomber Harris, and I was fascinated to see, as we travelled swiftly through the darkness, that towns and cities were illuminated by the lights of factories which were working flat out, both day and night, in the production of all kinds of much-needed goods and in the recovery of the German economy.

I reflected that back in England at the time there seemed to be little 24/7 manufacturing of goods and I was full of admiration for the resilience of the German people who, largely through no fault of their own, had suffered terrible retribution and destruction from carpet bombing by allied aircraft.

As we were approaching Munich, the capital of Bavaria, I struck up a conversation with a German-speaking boy who spotted me writing up my diary. Peeking into my diary he commented vehemently that he was Austrian, not German, and that he was on his way home to Vienna, his birthplace. He was quick to point out that he hated "That German scum, Hitler" who had marched into his beloved Austria in 1938. In the interest of maintaining friendly international relations, I refrained from mentioning that Hitler was actually born in Austria and that it was during his time in Vienna that he had developed many of the ideas that would shape Nazi ideology.

From as early as 1952 Hitler's infamous 'Eagle's Nest', high in the mountains just outside Berchtesgaden, was accessible to the public and many of us in the party would have liked to have paid a visit, but for some reason, 'Purdy' was not keen to take us to see the notorious  "Berghof".

The Eagle's Nest, Hitler's mountain retreat - a 'Camp David' for his Nazi regime

During our stay in Berchtesgaden, 'Purdy' delighted in showing off his German-speaking prowess and one day he told us we had a treat in store; apparently he had been invited to take us to a local restaurant for the German equivalent of a fish and chip supper (Weisswurst sausages), and on our arrival the manager beamed with delight as his popular sausages were brought to the table. We all hated the pasty, white sausages, much to the dismay of the manager, and poor old Tilley looked on in deep embarrassment as a pyramid-shaped mountain of Bavaria's favorite delicacy was trundled back to the kitchen right under the nose of the corpulent restaurateur.

The beaming smile quickly disappeared along with the food, and JFT rounded on us all for dissolving into laughter when 'Cobber' Walton commented wryly that the portly manager was probably finishing them all off at that very moment. Cobber received a cuff around the ear and we were not invited back.

We had a whale of a time on the trip and Jimmy Sharples (who else), became entranced by a very pretty girl who sold cold drinks and ice cream from a small roadside cabin, and he spent a good portion of his money and some of mine on ice lollies, to no avail, in pursuit of this delectable creature.

Venturing over the border into Austria we took a spectacular cable-car ride on Austria's highest mountain and enjoyed trips to Salzburg and Lake Zell am See. Back in Bavaria, we visited the magical Neuschwanstein Castle, and by the end of the holiday I had captured many memorable moments which I was able to take back to school where I gave a lecture on our visit.

Taken en route to our cable car ride

Zell am See

Neuschwanstein Castle

One of John Tilley's many interests was meteorology and he ran a weather station on the grassy quadrangle where he collected data on rainfall, wind strength and temperatures, which he sent to the Meteorological Department. Purely by coincidence, I happened to be in the area when JFT discovered that his rainfall collection unit had been tampered with by a group of pranksters in the early hours of the morning after an illicit beer drinking session in the school barn. The readings were unprecedented and needless to say he was not amused. In a pink fit he grilled me about it for several minutes, suspecting my involvement.

John Tilley's meteorological notes taken from the April 1956 edition of The Oswestrian

On the night of Thursday 2 February, 1956, the lowest ever recorded temperature of 21 degrees of frost was reached; this was 7 degrees lower than any previous recording at school, and I remember Headmaster Williamson announcing it to us all at morning assembly. The low temperatures lasted several weeks, but, notwithstanding, we were all unceremoniously bundled out of the building during breaktimes and after class. Sitting on the large cast iron radiators in the classrooms in the midst of winter was a popular pastime if we could get away with it, but Stoker and Purdy were relentless in their pursuit of frowsts and they trawled down the long corridor bellowing at us to get outside. Most of the classrooms were situated off to the right along the length of the corridor.

The long corridor looking a lot fancier than in its dilapidated state during the fifties

In the third and final part of this trilogy, I will reveal more about the multi-faceted John Francis Tilley.