The following is Lawson's account of his second trip to the Dolomites and was typed by his wife, Gill, from his diaries . Gill has kindly allowed the club to include his photgraphs from the trip in this article

After my first trip to the Dolomites, despite the poor weather, I knew it would be my favourite mountain destination. In 1960 ordinary climbers only had an annual holiday period of fourteen days. I could not see the sense in wasting those precious days shivering among the ice and snow of the central Alps when I could be on a vertical wall of warm rock, basking in the sunshine. There was always the possibility of the odd storm of course!!!

I had little difficulty in persuading Malcolm, Nipper, John, Kewie and of course Mac to make up a group to hire a mini bus and drive down to the Dolomites for a fortnights camping holiday. Our first problem arose at Dover. In those days to travel abroad by motor vehicle you needed to take the vehicle documents with you. I had arranged with Lightfoot's garage to put the documents under the seat and leave the mini bus outside their garage so that we could collect it after they had closed. Oh dear!! When we picked up the bus the documents weren't there. We had no person we could contact and so decided to drive down to Dover and get something from the Customs down there. Customs told us that we had no chance of getting into Italy without the proper documents. However they agreed to write up a form and put their official stamp on it, but pointed out that it wouldn't be any use.

Travelling down through France was a bit nerve-racking because of the stupid French road rule of Priorité à droit. This means that even though you are driving on the right on a main road someone coming in on your right from a minor road has priority. However another problem was the performance of our mini bus. Once behind a lorry it was not easy for our driver to see if anything was coming from the opposite direction and he had to rely on one of the front passengers to advise him. John was in the left seat, I was in the middle and Malcolm (who had only recently passed his test) was driving when we were trundling behind a large lorry. John said it was ok to pull out. I said that there was a car in the distance. John said "oh, he's miles away". Poor Malcolm, he hesitated and was lost! He had to pull quickly back in again as the car went past with horn blasting away. A motor bike behind the car nearly crashed into him. (Since writing of this incident Alan Kew says it was he who was driving). About a mile further on a motor bike overtook us and waved us down. It was the Gendarme who had been behind the car! He didn't speak any English and we didn't speak any French. However we could tell that he was not very impressed with our driving skills. He produced a very lengthy form which he started to fill with the drivers name and address, date of birth, father's name address, date of birth and every other detail of relatives going back to William the Conqueror. Once we realised that the policeman couldn't understand us, we started butting in with sarcastic comments and I remember Mac saying to Malcolm (or Kewie) to tell him we don't want tickets for the dance. The Gendarme got the driver to sign his form and then demanded "trente nouveaux francs - toute de suite". We had no alternative but to pay up and drive on.