School Outings/Trips

[Twocky61]

Way back in the mid seventies our school organised week holidays such as to an adventure camp where you went out on canoes and did rock climbing & hiking over the hills in the Lake District. We didn't do mountain climbing but we did everything but that

We all went there in a convoy of six school mini-buses.

We also went to the Three Counties Show in Malvern Worcestershire UK. There were lots of country stores selling things like farm foods etc. Whilst there the Army had a stall where you could sign up to be in the army. A few of us applied. They came to see me to tell me treaining will start next month

I DOR'd after a few months

[zabadak]

Re: School Outings/Trips

Nothing like that for us. The only one I can remember from when we lived in Middlesex was to The Tower Of London.

We moved to Devon in 1973 and that school took us to Corfe Castle, Hembury Hill Fort and a local farm and river!

[Twocky61]

Re: School Outings/Trips

Nowadays schools organise very few school outings because of the litigation culture we now live in

[staffslad]

Re: School Outings/Trips

I can remember very few school outings. In Junior school, we had a day trip to Woburn Abbey, but mums also came along. At Secondary school, I remember going to a zoo, but that was for our Biology course. The only non-course related trip was in 1977 when they organised a trip to the cinema to see Star Wars. The cinema was in a large town about 45 mins away. We had a cinema in our town but the school said the film wouldn't play at our local. I was sceptical and didn't go, and sure enough a couple of weeks later it was on at our local cinema.

[Mulletino]

Re: School Outings/Trips

I remember a few from Junior School:

Southend Aircraft Museum was a regular - loved that Vulcan Bomber, always bought an airfix kit from the gift shop too.
Colchester Zoo - always remember when Simon Martin went to feed an elephant a peanut and ended up with a ring of poo on his hand! XD
Leeds Castle - was amazed how much of the castle there was compared to our local Hadleigh Castle.
Kentwell Hall - trying to trick the actors into coming out of character.
The big one was the Isle of Wight, that was in the 5th year. We got to stay there for the weekend without our parents.

[moogleymog]

Re: School Outings/Trips

Warwick Castle - So much better then than now.
Wren's Nest - A nature preserve in Dudley. Interesting place because there are lots of sea creature fossils and fossilised ripple markings which prove that Dudley used to be underwater.
Kenilworth Castle - Can't remember much apart from the ruins. Would like to go again.

[George 1978]

Re: School Outings/Trips

I only went on day trips as my parents didn't want me to be away from home for too long.

The ones I can remember (not counting the ones that was just a few miles away) :

1984: Twycross Zoo - This was presumably during the days when Molly Badham and the PG Tips chimps helped with the zoo's publicity.
1984: Skegness - Probably just to build sandcastles.
1987: Blue John Cavern? - I remember visiting some caves in Derbyshire, so that could have been it. When I was looking at Corriepedia and read about a 1960s episode of Coronation Street where the characters went to caves in Derbyshire, I realised that is the same place where I probably went myself.
1988: London - My first visit to the capital, to visit the London Planetarium as part of topic on light. Got stiff necks looking up to see the projector thing on the ceiling telling us about our solar system - The building is now part of Madame Tussaud's, which I visited in 2006 - the year that the Planetarium closed - many years after I left school. Had lunch in Regent's Park.
1993: London again - The Imperial War Museum. I was doing GCSE History, and so this was part of our topic.

I think there were others but they haven't come to mind as I am writing this. Went to the local theatre to see some things, but that was local of course.

And as we would be out all day, it meant packed lunches. After midday, cue around 30 children (or more than that if more than one class was going on the same coach) sitting at park benches with their lunchboxes, and in the mid to late 1980s, nearly everyone had a Bluebird lunchbox. Bluebird literally sponsored packed lunches in the 1980s!

[Big Tim]

I went on lots of school trips - both primary and secondary.

Primary School:
1986 - Light-water Valley, near Ripon. It was more of a wildlife park / farm attraction with a few fairground rides back then, opposed to being a Theme Park.
1987 - Skipton Castle (Day Trip)
1988 - Caphouse Colliery (National Mining Museum) near Wakefield. Second time lucky as the dilapidated hired coach broke down in the school yard on the day of the original visit.
1989 - Yorkshire Dales. 3 day residential visit, based in Hawes Youth Hostel. Visited Aysgarth Falls, Wensleydale Cheese Factory, Hardraw Force and had evening meals in a local pub (White Hart Inn)
1990 - Day Trip to Whitby. Not much in the way of work / education, just a good end of term treat I think
1991 - Lake District. 5 day residential visit, based in Lakeside House Hotel, Keswick. Climbed Cat Bells, went on a boat on Derwent Water, looked round various museums etc

Secondary School:
1993 - Day Trips with the geography department to local small towns - Malton and Goole to do surveys, take photos and make observations. Quite a lengthy (dull) project
1997 - Sixth Form. 5 day residential visit to Seahouses on the Northumberland Coast. Visited open cast mine near Newcastle, had a nervous day doing surveys in Washington (a bit of an edgy town in the North East), and got a lambasting for going out underage drinking in the evening!
1998 - Sixth Form. 7 day residential visit to Barcelona. Saved the best until last. It was a Business Studies trip, but to be honest it was more of a holiday (during the February half term), and we did a couple of tours of various factories over there, but the rest was made up of fun activities like going to a theme park high up above the city, a tour of the Nou Camp etc.

Also between 1994 - 1998 as an English Literature student we attended quite a few theatre performances of various plays - the furthest being at Warwick University for a production of Henrik Ibsen's "Ghosts", which was a fourteen hour round trip from York on a dark November Saturday.

[Big Tim]

Wow, I am so envious of your Barca Trip here Big Tim and more so the Nou Camp .... but I can understand what you mean by your School trips to Malton (which is a beautiful town), though not Goole which is dull at the best of times!!

80sChav

Barcelona was brilliant. I think I need to get back there some day.

Totally agree re: Malton and Goole. The idea of the project was to compare two reasonably sized towns in terms of their urban / economic backgrounds being a similar distance from York (where the school was), and how industry, retail etc differed. One of the tasks on each trip was to walk the main city centre streets and note the use / business operating in each individual building. All quite tedious stuff, not on the level of the residential trips of the later years!

[Big Tim]

True Big Tim I agree yeah - but i don't suppose Goole is too bad -a Town, but like most Towns it has gone down the swanny due to Supermarkets opening big sites - which Goole has 2 of very near-by in Tesco's and Morrisons.

Barcelona sounded epic - I'd love to do a Spanish or italian Footballl Weekend that involves Tours of Stadiums etc. i bet did you by a Barca shirt and then wear it nder your school 1 when u got back!!/ Though i must say I prefer Barca has a team to real, but Real have constantly and consistantly always had the best Shirts ever and no-body can get near. Eluded to that they are white so are'nt too visable like Barca's Red and Blue under a White Shirt!! Even that one with a Polo Collar Madrid did about 8/9 years back would have been epic if Schools had a Polo uniform - I'd have done anything to do try that JUST once!!

Btew I replied to your PM, hope you got it!!!!!!!!!?

80sChav

Indeed many of us did buy Barca shirts (from the club shop). We had to persuade the many street vendors on Las Ramblas that we didn't want fake footie shirts though (along with watches, sunglasses et al). The other souvenir from that trip, which still survives is a pint glass from the Hard Rock Cafe. The footie shirt was loaned to someone at Uni when we were playing 5-aside, and never returned. Still annoys me to this day - I suppose I could replace it with one of the same era on Ebay, but it wouldn't be the exact one I purchased at the Nou Camp!

[Cartimand]

Last night I dreamt about something I don't recall even thinking about for some 50 years.

I was back at junior school and my class went on a school trip to a coffee museum (might have been a coffee and tea museum).

My dream was so vivid that I could almost smell the rich coffee aroma when I woke and some details of the trip (must have been 1969 or 70) like the large tubs of coffee beans on display, the impressive central atrium so you could look down onto an open lower level, carpeted rampways and the pocket guide to the history of coffee we were given, in the shape of a large cardboard fold-out coffee bean, were unlocked from the recesses of my memory for the first time in maybe half a century.

I had to Google for the place when I woke, but was unable to find anything that matched my dream and/or memories.

I think it was south or south-west London and the building seemed modern and even slightly futurist, rather than more typical historical museum premises.

It's bugging me now that I cannot find any record of the place that I know I visited all those years ago and which visited me in last night's dream.

Anyone out there recall somewhere like this?

[Cartimand]

Last night I dreamt about something I don't recall even thinking about for some 50 years.

I was back at junior school and my class went on a school trip to a coffee museum (might have been a coffee and tea museum).

My dream was so vivid that I could almost smell the rich coffee aroma when I woke and some details of the trip (must have been 1969 or 70) like the large tubs of coffee beans on display, the impressive central atrium so you could look down onto an open lower level, carpeted rampways and the pocket guide to the history of coffee we were given, in the shape of a large cardboard fold-out coffee bean, were unlocked from the recesses of my memory for the first time in maybe half a century.

I had to Google for the place when I woke, but was unable to find anything that matched my dream and/or memories.

I think it was south or south-west London and the building seemed modern and even slightly futurist, rather than more typical historical museum premises.

It's bugging me now that I cannot find any record of the place that I know I visited all those years ago and which visited me in last night's dream.

Anyone out there recall somewhere like this?

Mystery solved!
A friend over at the Forteana forum suggested it was the old Commonwealth Institute and the photo brought it all back to me.
Anyone else remember going to an exhibition there?