by Lunch packages, bumpy coaching trips, the sum of the excitement … school trips are engraved into the childhood memories of many people. Regardless of whether it was a moist sandwich on the steps of a castle or lost a Welly boot in a mud-soaked campsite, these excursions offered a wonderful mix of freedom, fun and friendship.
With increasing costs and increasingly stricter security rules, half of the state school heads now report to reduce the trips. The travel clerk Sally Howard recently considered what young people should lose when the classic school trip falls by the wayside and her article prompted Telegraph reader to share good memories of their own adventures.
“We were more interested in romance than flora and fauna.”
In 1954 the reader C Brooks was only 11 years old. But he still lively remembered a school trip to Derbyshire. “We visited the Blue John Cavern, the steelworks and went to a coal man,” he wrote. “The best of everything is that with a girl from another school who lived in the hostel, I was allowed to hold hands with a girl! All of that and my mother only cost £ 12.”
Another reader, Ivan, also met a girl on a school trip – she became his wife. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said, about his geography trip from the fifth years after Duntisbourne Abbots in Gloucestershire. “As I remember, we were more interested in romance than flora and fauna.”
For many, it is the simple thrill of one day from the classroom that remains the most alive. Uncomplicated times filled with small joys and permanent impressions.
Emma Dixon was at school in the 1970s and 1980s and remembered Hadrian’s wall, the Open-Air Beamish Museum and various Northumberland Curles. “Everything was very exciting, one day free and singed on the bus,” she said. “It was also the only time that I had allowed chips in my packed lunch box. Happy Days!”
“Our teacher brought us for a walk to Dartmoor … in January”
Michael D Jackson offered a similarly nostalgic picture: “A trip at the end of the school year from the 1980s [took us] From Sheffield to the Yorvik Viking Center and the York Railway Museum. With a packed lunch on the river, the smell of Flat Coca Cola and ready salted chips in the coach house while we got the Donkey Kong game around. Brilliant stuff! “
John Devon remembered a high school in Dartmoor. He says: “In the late 1960s, our school took a trainer of children from Devon to Dartmoor for a walk. In January. The wind howled almost horizontally and the river we were supposed to cross was a wild torrent that was swollen from weeks of rain.
“We came behind our relentless teacher who was happily giving up with the mutiny grumbling. My buddy looked around and wondered loudly if the Duke was ever given posthumously by Edinburgh Award.
“Later I inspected my lunch – a sandwich that performed a quarter of customs that was provided by the school and decided to get better in the future. Happy memories …”
It seems that health and security were usually a subsequent thought. Mabel Burlington commented: “In 1982 I made a geography excursion. One evening the teachers went to the pub and left the school minivan in our camping field with a key in the ignition! Of course this was an open invitation for the boys (15 years old) to jump and drive in the field.
N White added: “In an African country in the 1960s, I remember a journey to a factory that contained asbestos. Nobody hit an eyelid. There was also an excellent volcano on halfway when a boy managed to smoke one leg. Such dangerous expeditions?
“People didn’t get out much – it was a great pleasure to go to the sea”
For the reader Kathleen Learmonth, school trips to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and the Margate Seaside in memory.
“I remember school trips as a sun -like highlands,” she said. “We drove to Margate with a double -decker bus and spent the day collecting shells and seatang. It took them from the classroom. It was simply exciting.
“People didn’t get out much in those days. It was a great pleasure to go to the sea or go to London. It helps to arouse different interests in children.”
There were new discoveries. Neil KW Jones wrote: “In the late 1950s, at the Junior School, we enjoyed a coaching trip to the Isle of Wight. The highlight was the Cadrookoke lock from Carisbrooke. I had saved a very large red apple for the home drive excursion before my packed lunch. It was a huge tomato!”
Jimmy Christian added: “All of our excursions were designed to be instructive – to see how whiskey was made to visit historical fighting sites, cattle farms, hydropower plants … The best thing was that we have a taste, even though the teacher did it, a fair game for him.”
“The school trip of my grandson to Costa Rica costs over £ 5,000.”
Many readers not only shared their stories, but also expressed concerns about the disturbing costs of the school trips of the 21st century. Ms. Learmonth compared her own experiences with those of her daughter, which she described as a “total racket”.
She said: “You sleep eight or 10 in a room and feed you simple pasta and still calculate 1,500 pounds. All mothers I talked about are right.”
Phil Parkinson added: “My grandson at the age of 15 will go to Costa Rica for a month next week. His mother, a single mother, was found that he should have the possibility of a life. Although I welcome the concept of the trip, the cost is almost elitic.”
An anonymous reader, whose grandchildren had to miss a class trip to Australia due to the unaffordable costs, argued that school trips “had passed the pale over the ridiculousness” and should either be abolished or forced to be British excursions.
Former teacher Rebecca Jacobs saw both value and stress in the current school scene landscape, but warned that if they will continue the current trajectory, they will exist.
She said: “School trips are really valuable for children. Companies are now calculating the earth and families cannot afford them [and] The legal responsibility is great [for] Staff. Travel will die if you all burden too much. “
