Worst school trip experiences

[crimesagainstwine]

What was your or your DC's worst school trip/foreign exchange/day-out?

For me it was Year 6 (though think we were then "first years" at secondary school) - week long trip to France (Brittany).

I was known to be a reasonable and strong swimmer and when other kids swam out and got in difficulty (nothing too serious thankfully) was told by teachers (the mid-eighties here) to "go and get them as you can swim".

Said teachers stood on shore whilst this 11 year old swam out in fairly choppy seas to tell other kids to come back to shore! The tide was treacherous and I was absolutely terrified the whole time. Thankfully we all got back ashore safely but no thanks from teachers - instead told that I had "taken my time" WTF??

DD1 went on exchange trip to city (foreign exchange) and at the last minute the original host company had collapsed. So new city and hosts chosen. They had a week with the "host" family in their house with her three mates.

It was so obvious hosts were in it for the money and had no interest in the students (aged 13) - two had a bed and two were on the floor.

They were given same food each day (cheese sandwich for lunch and cheap pizza for dinner) - no breakfast and then locked (literally with key) in room from 6pm til 8am each day. She was "lucky" in that only one out of the 4 who could speak the language - the others were absolutely terrified.

They were told to hand in mobiles each night and if wanted to use the loo had to knock on the door. Still makes me absolutely frigging furious this one!

Went on a school sciences field trip to a centre on the outskirts of Lyme Regis in first year of our GCSE’s (1986/87) the daytime activities were boring to the extent that I’ve no recollection of what we did at all but, in the evenings some of the pupils were wild - even down to drinking alcohol and partying all nights with the centre’s 20 something male staff in their employee quarters. There were the usual food fights that seemed to happen on many school trips in the 80’s along with girls playing tricks on teachers.

It was so bad that the school never ran the trip again 😱😱

We went on a year 6 trip to - the filter beds. Worse, it was over the road from the school so we just walked there. No bus or packed lunch excitement.

I don’t remember any awful trips with school. We’d take a ferry over to France for the day which I loved.
My db in the other hand went on a geography field trip to some local stream. It was quite hilly and as he got closer to the stream somehow broke his ankle. He was in a cast for 3 months after that. He said he had a good time before that happened, but they made him walk back to the bus about a mile away.

[quote crimesagainstwine]@buckleten - we must have been to the same school as I remember the flick knife "craze" too!![/quote]
A certain school in Solihull if so me too

I remember (not two terrible trips) but moments France skiing in secondary school and the male teacher had keys for each room and he insisted on keeping a key and would just open the door in the morning or at night. I got told off for leaving the other key in the door the other side.

Said teacher used his wife and children as chaperones so essentially they had a free holiday.

I think aged maybe 9/10, don't remember where we were going on the school day trip but the coach we were travelling in went round the corner on a country road and hit a pony that had decided to jump the fence from it's paddock into the road at that particular moment. Pony had to be put down, it's owner was a girl around the same age as us and she was understandably hysterical. Then everyone needed the loo and there wasn't one on the coach so I remember us all queuing up for the bathroom in this girl's home listening to her sobbing and her mum trying to comfort her. Grim.

My dd school trip to NY. On the subway a man got a knife out and was waving it around. The teachers got all the dc off at the next stop and told them not to ring their dp’s as their would understandably panic.
On the same trip a pupil was daydreaming and didn’t get off at the subway stop.
One of the teachers had to run to the next stop and meet her. Fortunately the other passengers told her to get off and wait for him.

My most boring trip ever was Jodrell Bank.
Nothing happened it was just boring.

@Nat6999

Guide camp when I was 10, had never been away from home before, the tents were awful. I was really homesick, parents were able to visit at the weekend & I never stopped crying all the time my parents were there & begged them to take me home. The guide leader refused to allow them to take me home, said I was attention seeking & was just a mardy child. I had an awful time & just wanted to go home, the weather was awful, it never stopped raining, everything including our sleeping bags was wet through, it was cold during the day & even colder at night. I have never been camping since & would never go again. I packed guides in as soon as we came back.

I could have written the exact same post My only experience of camping in a tent was with the Guides. A rainy week in a leaky tent in the middle of a field. Everything was soaked, including our bedding. I begged to go home mid week but wasn't allowed to. Barely ate, or slept, had a miserable time, awful period pains too, and nowhere to have a proper wash. I got home and went upstairs immediately for a bath. I left Guides not long after that experience.

@violetbunny yes!!! It was NZ. Everything had to be a bloody outdoor pursuit!

I'm pretty sure that DH can win this thread...he still talks in horror about his school trip to visit an abattoir . Unsurprisingly many of the children were somewhat traumatised by the experience! Why oh why would anyone think that was a good idea for a school trip?

I went to Poland and Germany in year 10. Amazing trip, loved the salt mines and Auschwitz. Hated the food and barely ate all week. I’m vegetarian so all week I just got fed cheese in place of meat and the cheese was vile, it was just pure rubber. We were allowed to go to the Tesco once or twice to spend our money on treats so I got loads of m&m’s and just ate those. I was honestly starving when I got home so Mum got me a takeaway pizza and I couldn’t eat it, think my stomach had shrunk.

As a parent, receiving a message just before end of school to the tune of "we would like to reassure parents that the Yr1/Yr5 bus did NOT crash today" has definitely been one of my most WTF? Parenting moments.

The actual truth was the poor kids had spent 2.5hrs in stationary traffic on the motorway.

My DD had a geography field trip in about Y5 or Y6 to Milton Keynes to look at the roundabouts once !

It's not as if any of them had never seen a roundabout before.

School holiday to Greece in the mid sixties, when I was 14. We had very little money but my dad was determined I should go,so he saved endlessly all year to pay for it. It was for six days, so I thought taking three outfits would be fine, two days for each one. On the first evening at the hotel I realised to my horror that everyone changed for the evening meal! I've never felt so out-of-place and awkward, but of course I told my poor dad that I'd loved it!

You know that awful trip to Russia shown in the program Skins?

That was based on a trip to Russia run by my college. I didn't go; my English teacher ran it. She spent much of the first term explaining that while there were many similarities, actually she had been having sex with a student teacher, not a student.

Never ran that trip again and begged all students to never speak to the Skins writers again (they regularly targeted the students for script ideas).

Went on an activity holiday in year 9 or 10 cant remember which. Had a great time . Got filthy, wet did all sorts it was such fun. Til the instructor stuck decided he'd kiss me. Ruined the while trip. I obviously didn't want to be in his group anymore so I swapped which meant I was n longer with my friend. So I was pretty lonely after that. Not having the friend I was with befire.

My own worst trip was to help restore a wildlife area. I was entirely covered in fetid swamp water and some fucker stole my spare change of clothes. Was soaked an hour in to a full day trip. No one would go near me, staff included, because I stank so badly.

Also fun was the trip to Exmore. The teacher leading our hike got very lost. It went from 5 miles, to 13ish interupted with breaks for him to panic about where we were. Luckily we eventualy hit a village, and the coach came to rescue us. He later had a long and loud argument with the other teachers.

In the nineties on a school trip to Austria. A tour guide read the map incorrectly the whole group was lost on in the Alps. We were due to go to a concert that night but we were lost for hours and even missed the evening meal.
We were wading through streams, nearly falling from steep slanty mountains. Some of the y7s cried. Y11s thought it was brilliant. Was sketchy for a while. Luckily we got back. Jokes of us being on that 999 program were had.

The tour guide got in a lot of trouble.

My school took us to morecambe bay on a week long geography field trip started in a 1* hotel and I had to share a bathroom.
I didn't even know 1 star hotels existed! And hopefully never need to again

I also had a weird stalker guy that kept coming up to me to tell me he loved me (!) we went on a coach trip somewhere and when I got off the school coach he was there too even though it was middle of nowhere. All of us girls just giggled it off as hilarious but I look back in horror at all of it.

Went to the New Forest in year 7. It rained and rained and our tent (old scout tents) leaked so badly we basically woke up floating and all went home with head lice.

@Aroundtheworldin80moves

As a parent, receiving a message just before end of school to the tune of "we would like to reassure parents that the Yr1/Yr5 bus did NOT crash today" has definitely been one of my most WTF? Parenting moments.

The actual truth was the poor kids had spent 2.5hrs in stationary traffic on the motorway.

We had a similar text. The coach had had a very close miss with a lorry that blew over on the motorway!

Nineties German Exchange one of the 13 y o boys got arrested at Gatwick for shop lifting before we had even left. I think that's when I realised my school was a bit rough.

I went to a catholic secondary school, in the fourth year we went on a religious retreat to a monastery in Ilkley. 🤣

We had heard from previous years that had gone, it wasn't religious at all or none of us would have gone.

Girls in one wing, boys in another. We bought booze in Ilkley. My friend and I shared a room, we made a makeshift toilet in the wardrobe with the waste bin, as going to the toilets in the middle of the night was really spooky, down dark corridors with empty rooms.

Our room was like the rover's return, full of cigarette smoke and lots of booze, we weren't checked on at all, by teachers or monks.

The food was good.

My GCSE music class at a secondary modern in a deprived area after school one day walked to town to see a grand piano at the boys grammar school. Their music teacher played the piano, while we all stood round. I had the honour of turning the pages. This seemed to go on for hours and my legs totally ached. But at least we all saw a grand piano in action

I wasn't allowed to go on the day trip to France because my DM wanted me to go on the residential French trip, which was totally pointless. I did not appreciate the Bayeux Tapestry or war graves one bit. I also learned no French. I wasn't friends with anyone else in the trip (although we rubbed along) and the only teacher from our school decided she really liked my bag and insisted on carrying it all week, so I didn't have easy access to my things. I had to interrupt her conversation with the teachers from the other school to ask for whatever I wanted from my bag, which annoyed her greatly.

Our school organised an exchange trip to France when I was 15 through a company that arranged that sort of trip for schools - turned out that everyone who signed up was expected to travel separately to their host family as the visits took place during the summer holidays.
I was dropped off by my parents at Victoria station where a company rep put me and a couple of other teens I'd never met before on a train to Dover. We were told to follow the signs to get on the ferry to France at the other end and look out for another rep with the same uniform when we arrived in Calais - they led us to the train to Paris. We found another rep at Paris who took us to a car park where the host families were meant to meet us.
Turned out that my host family hadn't travelled to Paris to collect me - instead they asked a friend to meet me and take me to the station to put me on a train alone to their city several hours away in the south east. At least he put me in a carriage with a family who were asked to make sure I got off at the correct station. This was long before mobile phones.
On the journey back after three weeks the parents did travel with me and their daughter to Paris but I assume she had the same experience when she travelled home after staying with us as we just left her with the same reps at Victoria.