Vintage France: Lyon, St.Etienne/Chambles & Injoux-Genissiat

LSE/King’s Geography field-trip to France & Switzerland April 1978 part 1 of 4

Southampton to Lyon (Venissieux); around Lyon Part-Dieu and day trips to Chambles and Injoux-Genissiat

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I have fond memories of this ‘field trip’ in my third year at university. In many ways it was something of a ‘baptism of fire’ for me as it was my first ‘holiday’ and my first trip overseas. I had pretty much got over being an ‘outsider’ at university but my working class background and lack of family support sometimes still shone through. Not having a holiday until I was 21 years old was something of a rarity amongst my fellow students, but perhaps I enjoyed this trip more than some because of this.

I took an instamatic camera with me that took 126-film cartridges, 20 shots to a cartridge. The negatives were stashed away in an envelope in 1978 and did not see the light of day until Covid in 2020. They had travelled with me from one address to another, languishing in cases and attics for over 40 years, deteriorating all the time.

Even then they were the last to be scanned as I had over 200 sets of 35mm film to scan first. Furthermore, my professional-standard Epson V850 scanner had almost every conceivable size of film-holder but not one for 126 film. At first I tried scanning on the glass bed but the results were poor. It was not until January 2025 that I latched onto the idea of using the medium-format film holder; not ideal but good enough.

The images are far from good in terms of quality but for me are an important historical document of my first trip abroad, visiting places that I have not visited since and which I probably would never have visited at all were it not in the context of a geography field trip.

I kept scant diary entries during this trip, but I know where I was on any given day. I may have got some of the maps wrong and if someone has a better memory of the trip than me, please let me know!

To France and Switzerland

My third and final geography field trip in my time at the King’s/LSE Joint School of Geography. After south Wales in year one and Leeds in year two it was a dramatic change. I had never had a holiday before and had certainly not been overseas, so more of an adventure for me than my fellow students. My inexperience with travel became obvious pretty much from the beginning.

My journey begins on Thursday 13th April with lunch (and beer) in London before hitching a lift to Southampton. Our ferry docked at LeHavre at 7am on Friday and by 11am we were in Paris. From there it was a long trip to Lyon; we were in our accommodation in Venissieux by 7pm, so a 12-hour journey in total.

The map shows three potential routes; I suspect we took one of the longer ones as that would have avoided tolls, but in all honesty I have no memory of the actual route, just the relief of arriving.

Day three – Saturday 15th – was a restful tour of the city but with a particular focus on the modern – and still under construction – business district of Part-Dieu. Modern architecture, modern (and fast) transport links and zoning. This was urban and economic geography and planning in the flesh. I remember being impressed at the time; I liked modern architecture and open spaces and this very much looked like the future.

Map showing routes from Lyon (Venissieux) to Chambles (St.Etienne)

The following day was a trip to the Massif Central town of St.Etienne and in particular Chambles on the Loire river. Chambles is a very small village but the surrounding countryside – and especially the Loire Gorge – is pretty spectacular. Unfortunately on the day of our visit – as indeed for much of our journey – the weather was against us, being grey, misty and dull, making for poor photographs.

Map showing route from Lyon to Injoux-Genissiat; I suspect we took the southerly route (darker blue) but I might be wrong

Tuesday (18th April) we left Lyon for Thonon but stopped for a while at Injoux-Genissiat, another small village but important for us geographers as this was a major energy centre on the Rhone, with a substantial hydro-electric dam.

The rest of our journey took us to Thonon-les-Bains on Lac Leman (as the French call it) – or Lake Geneva as it is known to most of us. More of that in part 2!