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Original poster

What random school trips did you go on?

223 replies

DhIsAJudge · 05/12/2025 13:59

GCSE drama and we were studying a midsummer’s night dream. We trekked over to the Lowry from north wales to watch a performance.

It was so bizarre, it wasn’t in English it was in Sanskrit, Hindi and another language which was fine but it was really hard to follow. It was also set in modern times and there was a massive scaffold on the set.

Then about 45 mins in the smoke alarm went off in the Lowry and the stage filled with smoke and the audience (us included) just stayed in our seats as we all thought it was part of the play until the ushers came round and told everyone to leave as one of the actors behind the scenes had accidentally set fire to a prop.

I genuinely think that if they hadn’t come out to tell us it was on fire we’d have just stayed there and burned to death.

We also went to a sub station and learned about electricity and as we went round the site I saw my dad who forgot we were coming 😂😂 (he was head engineer and he knew he had a school trip but didn’t know it was my school)

OP posts:
PluckyChancer · 05/12/2025 14:02

In Primary school we went on a tour of the local sewage works and had to walk all the way there and back again. Fuck knows why they thought that would make a good day out for a bunch of 10yr olds. 😳

Original poster
DhIsAJudge · 05/12/2025 14:11

Man that’s so grim!!

OP posts:
NotDarkGothicMama · 05/12/2025 14:14

VIth form economics trip to Brussels. We were there for three days, all got very drunk and spent 1 hour at the European Parliament building before getting kicked out of the gift shop.

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Toddlerteaplease · 05/12/2025 14:22

PluckyChancer · 05/12/2025 14:02

In Primary school we went on a tour of the local sewage works and had to walk all the way there and back again. Fuck knows why they thought that would make a good day out for a bunch of 10yr olds. 😳

We did that as well! It was interesting

girljulian · 05/12/2025 14:23

Anybody else go to Eden Camp? I still remember the smell! It poured with rain and we were all sitting eating our disappointing sandwiches in some sort of barrack.

MintTwirl · 05/12/2025 14:31

The Underground Hospital in Guernsey. Obviously an important and interesting place for many but 10 year old me found it so creepy and frightening.

JDM625 · 05/12/2025 14:34

I went to secondary school abroad and studied French. I have no idea how that teacher managed it, but we went on the weirdest excursions with her to 'improve our French'.

-3hr round trip by train to the city to see a French film at an independent cinema in a very shady part of town. The film was Le ballon rouge and it's almost a completely silent film!
-1 lunch we were away from school for several hours to go to a 'French' restaurant. They served some loosely French meals, but none of the staff spoke French when we tried to order
-Another lunch we all got the train to a newly opened Pret a Manger in a shopping centre!

ImWearingPantaloons · 05/12/2025 14:45

@PluckyChanceryou didn’t grow up in Northants did you?

A trip to the local sewage works was a rite of passage for every primary school child there. In fact I don’t think you were allowed to go to secondary school until you’d completed that trip.

Rosamutabilis · 05/12/2025 14:52

PluckyChancer · 05/12/2025 14:02

In Primary school we went on a tour of the local sewage works and had to walk all the way there and back again. Fuck knows why they thought that would make a good day out for a bunch of 10yr olds. 😳

I was a parent helper on my son's trip to the local sewage works, I thought it was fascinating and the children enjoyed it! We did that in the morning then had a guided tour of the local tip and landfill site in the afternoon, again it was very interesting, I learned a lot that day!

When I was in primary school in the early 70s we went on a tour of an oil refinery, it was a great trip.

purser25 · 05/12/2025 14:55

I would have thought anything to do with poos and wees would appeal to 10 year olds so yes to sewage works.

TeenToTwenties · 05/12/2025 15:01

A bread factory when I was about 10.

Also saw a very weird production of Macbeth when doing it for O Level. It was so off the wall that the school took us to another more standard one later.

Then as an adult I was in Edinburgh for a short break and we went to the theatre to see The Hobbit. Going along fine until the power went. After a while someone started a sing a long which was fine in theory but we did feel a bit awkward not know the words to Flower of Scotland and similar patriotic songs.

canuckup · 05/12/2025 15:02

Helmshore textile museum

The joys

Tigerbalmshark · 05/12/2025 15:04

We went for a walk up Mill Post Hill to see where the mill had previously been (now marked with a non-mill-shaped wooden post). Thrilling stuff.

canuckup · 05/12/2025 15:04

Loving midsummer nights dream in Sanskrit

😂

VeryQuaintIrene · 05/12/2025 15:05

Bloody Box Hill, which was very boring and we'd just got down it when our biology teacher spotted a bee orchid (very rare, apparently) and made us climb all the way up the bloody thing to see something extremely underwhelming unless you were an ardent botanist, which I wasn't.

Leavemealone1986 · 05/12/2025 15:11

girljulian · 05/12/2025 14:23

Anybody else go to Eden Camp? I still remember the smell! It poured with rain and we were all sitting eating our disappointing sandwiches in some sort of barrack.

We did the same the highlight of the trip was the class clown locking himself in the toilet on the coach and setting the alarms off.
35 years later I can still remember that smell.
It was freezing cold and wet and the 90 min coach ride back was actually 3 hours! Those poor teachers must have been grateful to get home that night.

CurlewKate · 05/12/2025 15:11

At a school in another country we had an annual trip on Haloween. We were taken to a graveyard and said prayers for the souls of the faithful departed then went for a picnic on the beach. My children howl with mirth whenever they remember this!

Faircastle · 05/12/2025 15:25

We went to the Lunt (reconstructed wooden Roman fortress).

I have never heard anyone mention it since. I Googled it just now to check that it was a real place and I hadn't just imagined it.

Original poster
DhIsAJudge · 05/12/2025 15:25

TeenToTwenties · 05/12/2025 15:01

A bread factory when I was about 10.

Also saw a very weird production of Macbeth when doing it for O Level. It was so off the wall that the school took us to another more standard one later.

Then as an adult I was in Edinburgh for a short break and we went to the theatre to see The Hobbit. Going along fine until the power went. After a while someone started a sing a long which was fine in theory but we did feel a bit awkward not know the words to Flower of Scotland and similar patriotic songs.

Ha yes! We saw another midsummers nights dream in the local theatre and it was absolutely incredible my teacher must have been so frustrated going all the way to Manchester with 30 teenagers on a Wednesday night when the theatre walking distance from the school was exceptional 🤣

OP posts:
Faircastle · 05/12/2025 15:27

One pupil agreed to dress up as a Roman soldier and have a photo taken. She is now an archeologist...

CraftyGin · 05/12/2025 15:29

We went on a distillery trip, with the obligatory sampling at the end.

Lastqueenofscotland2 · 05/12/2025 15:30

im old so this would have been in about 1066, about 15/20 of us went to France, stayed in this crumbling French mansion, in the middle of nowhere, no doors or curtains to the showers (so obviously being 15 year old girls no one washed for a week, we must have stank), we were visited by a troupe of dancing children (very odd), and one of the girls got terribly travel sick the entire way back (driving, from mid France, to Aberdeen…) must have been torture for her.

i recently when visiting my mother caught up with an old school friend who I’d not seen for about a decade and that trip made up a solid 95% of our conversation.

Zimunya · 05/12/2025 15:32

An asbestos mine and a sugar cane factory. I did not grow up in the UK!

CraftyGin · 05/12/2025 15:32

VeryQuaintIrene · 05/12/2025 15:05

Bloody Box Hill, which was very boring and we'd just got down it when our biology teacher spotted a bee orchid (very rare, apparently) and made us climb all the way up the bloody thing to see something extremely underwhelming unless you were an ardent botanist, which I wasn't.

I took a school trip to Box Hill. When we got to the top, we discovered that the two boys who were entrusted with the quadrats left them at the bottom. 20 minutes later...

RescueMeFromThisSilliness · 05/12/2025 15:37

In primary school many years ago we went to Stansted Mountfitchet Castle and we were all really excited on the way there.

When we arrived were were somewhat taken aback to find not a real-life castle with turrets, battlements, drawbridge etc but a grassy mound with a ditch round it.