Year 7 French Trip 19th – 21st May 2005
56 boys from Year 7 jumped at the opportunity to spend three days in Northern France practising their languages skills, developing their mathematical reasoning, enhancing their historical and cultural understanding of this corner of Northern Europe while having loads of fun along the way.
A mixed weather forecast failed to deter the party and in fact we enjoyed fine weather while we were there, especially on Saturday in Le Touquet where, according to those who have been staffing this trip for nearly two decades, the sun always shines!
Potential disaster loomed on Friday night when the bus broke down, having got us safely back to the hotel. However, Mark our driver, and his company Holmeswood were excellent in ensuring that our trip continued as normal. The company arranged for two French coaches to take us to Le Touquet and then finally to the ferry, which we boarded as foot passengers. Mark, meanwhile, had taken our double decker back to Dover and worked flat out with a fitter to repair it. When we arrived, he was waiting to take us home.
At the end of it all, is it worth such a long journey for so short a stay? Definitely yes, if you pack in as much as we do! True, Thursday is mostly a travelling day, but the ferry journey’s fun and the hypermarket visit is a good introduction to how the French do some things differently. The local supermarket in the UK definitely doesn’t sell pans by the kilo (!) or quad bikes. Friday’s programme of guided café visit, street survey, market tasks, military cemetery, sweet factory tour, outdoor picnic, hike around Boulogne ramparts, inspection of a speciality cheese shop, Nausicaa Sea Life Centre, beach football and sandcastle building competition shows what you can achieve between 7.30 a.m. and 10.30 p.m.!! And we still had a full morning’s activity on Saturday in Le Touquet.
Samuel Edwards, Jude Low, Thomas Larner, Riko Yu and David Duncan won prizes for the outstanding workbook in their group while Alexander Hind took the prize for the best workbook overall. Congratulations also to Johnathan Williams for the most impressive Maths worksheet.
A big thank you to Martin Roden for the work on the war graves, to Brian McGuirk for the Maths worksheet and to Louise Smeaton, Elaine Wilday and Jo Butterworth for looking after their groups so well.
For Photographs of the trip click here
