What random school trips did you go on?

[DhIsAJudge]

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)

I have both been on a trip to a supermarket (Safeway!) and as a teacher facilitated one 😂 that one was to Tesco and we actually went behind the scenes and I think there was some sort of healthy eating/farm to fork messaging behind it…

In 6th form I did A level drama and we went to watch a play - I can’t even remember what it was - and one of the actresses stripped off to be completely naked and danced around the stage. I cannot tell you how shocked we were!! We then had a Q&A with the cast/director afterwards. The teachers seemed to think it was fine?!

Think we also went to the council offices one time in primary school…and to a building site near our school where loads of new houses were being built. Lots of the children at the school were rehoused in to the finished houses.

I wonder if we were at the same schools somewhere down the line

I once took my class of year 1's to Chester zoo and as we walked in the giant tortoises were having sex, (giving each other piggybacks). We wrote about it too and everyone drew them in their books. 🥰😂

I was asked to chaperone my 8 year old son's class to the beach. Everything was great and moving along swimmingly (sorry!) Until we saw the lifeguards running down the beach around a rock cropping. In a bit, we saw the lifeguards carrying a stretcher with an elderly man on it. He was as white as a ghost, and obviously dead. I don't think the kids quite understood what was actually happening, but I still can't get the image out of my head...30 years on😭

I don't think that was a wise field trip..I was a nervous wreck trying to keep up with my 10 assigned 8yr. olds.

God, I’d completely forgotten about a primary school trip to a farming college where one of the 18-year-old students told a small group of us exactly how they kill beef cattle with a bolt through the skull. No teachers there. Cried for weeks whenever I thought about it.

This has just reminded me when I was in Brownies we had a trip to the local police station, we got to see the cells and everything!

Yes Box Hill for me too! 😄

But also a couple of times to the South of England Show at Ardingly. It was incredibly boring - just basically a vast area of various companies trying to sell a tractors, fertiliser and the like to farmers. Just a commercial enterprise. Very little for school kids to do except try some goat's milk. It was always raining and we'd be there for hours.

Another one when I was 5 years old we went to Lancing to the beach. The beach was stony, it was freezing cold, raining with ominous black clouds. We picked our way over the stones to the far off sea and paddled a bit in freezing sea while some teachers held a rope to form a square for us to be restrained in. Then shivery and with blue lips we tiptoed back to our class, get dressed and ate a choice of sweaty cheese, spam or marmite white sandwiches washed down with a cup of watery squash. The sandwiches were in vast metal trays with lids and provided by school. I don't think packed lunches had been invented in those days.

Both were ghastly trips pretending to be treats.

I did this with guides!! ‘Crime prevention’ badge.

Lol I can't remember if it was a badge or not but we did do some ridiculous things for badges 😅

We also went to a newly opened Tesco. We went into the bakery part and were allowed to put the jam in a doughnut using the machine. It was actually quite thrilling! In comparison, the previous year we had been to a paper making mill, which was unbelievably boring. The photos of 30 bored children standing around vats of gloopy beige paper pulp at various stages of wetness were fairly comical.

Tortoises! They're always at it!

Maybe they just do it once, very slowly?

Completely agree. 🥰😂

To be fair, it was quite impressive considering their size and age! It still makes me chuckle when I think about their books. 🥰😂

As a Brownie we went to Brown Owl's friend's house because they had a swimming pool in the back garden (fancy and, I imagine, chilly in 1980s Norfolk) and spent the evening throwing rubber rings in the water for our water safety badge. We also had to lie on our stomachs on the edge of the pool with someone leaning on our legs.

It must have been a mildly chaotic brownie pack - we once failed our agility badge en masse.

Imagine that now ,it would never be allowed due to health and safety 😂😅

I did my Brownie ramblers badge, and the assessment involved going for a long walk with the husband of a teacher (just the two of us) one Sunday afternoon. I'd never met him before and must have been eight at the time. Safeguarding would never allow it these days! Badge assessments often involved going into random people's houses - I seem to remember Brown Owl's mum testing our House Orderly badge. She got her carrots peeled and chopped on a regular basis!

Oh yes I have a vague memory of getting a badge ,maybe something to do with animal/ pet care 🤔
And me and my friend were sent to Talk to someone in their house about cats
We would have been about nine.

We did a bushcraft evening at our Brown Owl's house, including building a fire on her patio. There was an air pocket under the paving and the whole thing exploded, sending paving slabs flying 8 feet into the air. By some miracle we were all on the grass at that point, no one was hurt and I was young enough to think it was very cool, but it gives me the shivers thinking back as an adult!

Oh I remember doing my brownie “home maker” badge, and having to go round to some random woman’s house by myself and clean her kitchen cupboards and iron her pants. I am sure I made a terrible job of it. I had no idea who she was, maybe Brown Owl’s mum or a random volunteer. In retrospect that was a weird badge!

Oh we were a massively naughty brownie pack! We used to kick the plastic toadstool over whenever Brown Owl turned her back. Our meetings were held in a village hall, and we used to lock the toilet cubicles from the inside then slide out under the door. One time, we dared somebody to climb a ladder into the loft above the stage, then ran off with the ladder. We used to dare each other to crawl under the fire curtain in the stage and run about in the dark, locked up auditorium.

They made me and my best friend sixers, hoping the responsibility would make us behave, but it actually just meant we both had five acolytes to lead astray.

I was much better behaved in Guides!

@Tigerbalmshark Sneaking under a curtain and running about in the auditorium is the sort of thing I would have done. Old church halls and churches can be full of secret passages. At my church, there were lots of passages leading up to walkways and windows, some of them with no protection from falling: I had plenty of time to gaze upwards and study these during boring services. On one occasion, the door to these passages was unlocked, so while the adults were nattering over coffee, I explored them, and freaked my parents out. I discovered that they led on to the roof of the church as well!

@x2boys and @modgepodge When you saw the cells, did any of you get locked in? This didn't happen on my police station visit, but I remember a crown court in London having an open day. I joined the queue of people (mostly children) to see inside the custody van; I sat in a compartment, and for a few minutes, I was locked up! It was fun, though, and I saw a stash of bags that prisoners could urinate into.