F.W. Rowswell - Writing for the St Michael's Parish Magazine - September 1954
FROM THE GROUP ANNUAL REPORT
The first August camp was arranged in Switzerland, at Schaffhausen and St. Moritz. We were the first British Scouts to camp at Schaffhausen, so. Swiss Scout records showed. Another record in our history was the altitude of the St.Moritz site, at 6000 ft, above the sea.
The tour began with a midnight trek across Dover; next morning we spent a few hours in Brussels, where we saw both the ancient and Modern: the lovely medieval Town Hall and Grand Place, and the new underground railway that brought us almost to its doors. Our arrival at Schaffhausen necessitated a second Consecutive midnight ramble across a deserted town, but yet the Swiss Rover Scouts were thee to meet us. Their kindness and keenness was superb. We camped in their own meadow adjoining their District Head quarters ( itself an admirable exhibition of practical and romantic Scouting set amid the wooded hills of the German border. We passed a whole afternoon at the wonderful Rhine Falls, Europe's greatest waterfall. We sailed up the Swiss Rhine to Lake Constance, then proceeded by train along the lake shore to Rorschach and then up the narrowing Rhine valley, with near glimpses of Austria and Lichtenstein, to Char. Here we were in the vast and mountainous Grisons canton; the Rhaetian Railway, one of the world’s engineering marvels, eventually brought us to the Upper Eagandine, the tourist, sporting and sanatorium land on the roof of Europe, in, strangely enough, the Danube basin.
Here we camped on a Tourist site bordered by hayfields and pinewoods, and overlooked by precipitous slopes of the 10,000 and 12,000 ft. Bernina range. Some of us climbed on foot to the 9.000 ft. Fuorcla Surlej (2753m) (our highest yet on foot). Day expeditions were made by the marvellous Bernina railway over the 7,500 ft. pass to the Morteratsch glacier (further explored on foot) and into the depths of the Poschiavo valley and northern Italy, where tobacco maize and vines flourish. Another enjoy-able ride was that on the ski-lift from Pontresina to Alp Languard, followed by a wall: along the High Path, at 65C0 ft. altitude to Muottas Muraigl (2454m) concluding with a descent by the funicular. The weather was as varied as it could be, scorching sun enough to call for medical remedy, and then rain and even snow. However, the camp proved to be conveniently sandwiched between two weeks of floods. So perhaps we were fortunate for 1954.
The below picture was labelled as Switserland 1954 but we aren't sure?

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