OVERSEAS excursions have been fondly remembered by former Rudheath schoolchildren.

Remember When has featured a number of stories prompted by 1950s school sports pictures brought into the Guardian by reader Toddy Barlow.

One of the football players featured was a boy called John Buckley, who sadly died in 1973, aged just 29.

His daughter, an artist who now lives in Switzerland, got in touch to say that while he was at Rudheath Secondary Modern School in the 1950s her dad went on a school trip to Switzerland.

She appealed to Guardian readers who may have been on the same trip for information so that she could visit the same places.

Toddy got in touch with her as he was on the excursion.

He said: "The trip we went on was to Engelburg, which had the biggest freshwater swimming pool in Europe.

"It was freezing cold because it was fed from mountain streams.

"You couldn't put your hands in those streams they were that cold because of the snow thawing and coming off the mountains."

John's story also struck a chord with Christine Johnson, of Spencer Street, in Castle, who grew up in West Avenue and went to Rudheath school.

She also went on a trip to Switzerland in the 1950s but hers was to Interlaken.

She said the trip was incredible, although it did not have the best of starts.

"We were on a ferry going across the channel and I thought 'I'm not going to survive' it was so choppy," she said.

"This man came and put us on the top deck and covered us with a tarpaulin and said 'don't move, I will be coming back and want you still sat here'.

"We were outside Calais and could see the lights shining but it was so rough they wouldn't let us through the break water.

"We were sat there all night until the sun came up then they let us go into the port.

"Coming back it was like a mill pond.

"But it didn't ruin the trip because the minute you get off the ferry you forget about all that."