To ask what the worst school trip was that you ever went on?

[MrsKiplin]

Mine was a trip to Belgium. I had a sickness bug the whole time and missed everything!

Trentham Gardens in the rain.

Year 7 trip to a Welsh 'theme park'. I had no friends so wandered around on my own all day, didn't like big rides, went to the arcade and played the push coin machines. Won big, I was delighted, until my winnings were stoled by an old lady. The coins poured out (pennies probably but it was a lot to me!) and she comes over with a toddler and goes 'oooh look' scoops all my money up and takes it away. I was speechless...

A trip up Cader Idris in the pouring rain. The biology teacher was delighted to find a particular rare plant but my friend managed to stand on it while looking around for it.
It was so wet that all the paths turned into torrents and we were nearly swept away.

Year 2 trip to the national portrait gallery. I was a parent helper and they gave me 6 kids (I have an only) to entertain for about 4 hours! Including the naughty twins that I couldn't tell apart.

They kept asking to go to the shop all day, had no interest in any of the pictures and there was nothing to do! Best bit was the picture of Lady Jane Grey's execution. I told them about her ( I'm keen on Tudor history) and it was the only time the little buggers were quiet. While doing that a group of Japanese tourists joined us, and proceeded to ask questions. Kids thought that was the best part of the trip.

Pencil museum
Enough said

School trip when i was about 12, so 1980 to the Commonwealth Institute. For those that missed the experience it was a series of rooms, one for each member of the Commonwealth. For added realism, the radiators were turned up in India. Simpler times.
The coach journey back was so awful that the teacher actually cried and the coach driver pulled over on M1 so he could properly shout at the horrible boys who were throwing stuff around the coach.
The following morning my class were berated in front of the whole school then kept back for an extra special shouting at.

I don't remember having a trip that I didn't enjoy in some ways but a few high (or low) lights:

Trip to the zoo in year 2. I was indignant, as year 2s always went to a different place, but for some reason they decided to shove us off with the rest of the infants (who usually went together). We were told to take our lunches in plastic bags. One girl sat on hers and the drink popped.

Trip with cadets at school. A group of us were being taken to the lakes to do rock climbing. Sounds okay, particularly as the rest of the year were going to be walking through mud and doing army assault courses (which I'm very bad at) at the local army barracks.
The day was a little like this morning. Winds up at 40-60mph and torrential rain. We went anyway in the minibus that was not much better than a tin can, being blown all over the road. Unsurprisingly the activity centre refused to let us climb the hill face.
We spent the day in a cold cave and had a brief respite in a climbing wall place which didn't really have enough space for all of us.

6th form. Leaving 2 boys behind over 100 miles away because they hadn't counted the number of people when we first got on. Apparently the number was "about right" when we left. Yep 2% loss rate isn't too bad on a school trip is it? School didn't know about it until the next day when the boys appeared with a bill for the train ticket.

And a couple from my dc: Infant trip to the sea side. The bus company sent 3 mini buses instead of 2 full sized buses. That meant they could get the children on but not the parental volunteers. So the parental volunteers decided to take a couple of cars.
One child fell in the sea and was soaked. They bought them an ice cream each and had to take cover when mobbed with seagulls. One of the boys fell down the steps and had to be taken to A&E with a sprained ankle. Another child broke her arm and was rushed off to A&E -their parent was one of the volunteers. When it came to leaving time they realised that parent was one of the car owners and half the parent volunteers were now stranded.
Funny thing was that they'd done the trip for years with never more than a grazed knee.

And another one where the school forgot to order the return coach for the year 6 residential. My dc arrived back around 6 hours late. His replacement bus driver had realised half way back that he was over hours for driving and pulled into a service station for an hour's rest. The children were kept on the bus for all that time, and they didn't even take them to the toilet. Dc arrived back at 9pm, having not eaten since lunch. I was unimpressed-I think the school could have at least run to chips each for that group.

Other thing about that was at the time we were told it was the bus company's fault and they'd messed up and sent them to the wrong place. In his end of year speech, the head made various comments about things that had happened over the year which included saying that the school had failed to order the coaches. He also admitted
several other things which made my respect for him sink exceedingly low.

Ooh I forgot, the residential with the communal showers, that was horrible that was, twenty cold wet ten-year-olds and a matron barking "No looking! No giggling! I handed out fifteen pieces of soap and I've only got twelve back and nobody gets their towel until I have fifteen!"

Sorry I found that funny in a strange way.

@YouBetterWORK - it was worst that the saint's head was on some type of podium.. I see it has been enclosed in a glass box since. Holding it aloft like your mummy experience would have finished us off right there.

@catcrazy008 - I was wondering who would first mention the pencil museum! See, I liked it but had also paid a lot to rent a house for a week when it didn't stop raining the entire week. I was primed to find anything fun.

Outward bounds with no risk assessment and watersports with no wetsuits seem to show up a lot.
Risk assessments were rarely done at one time for anything. And nobody wore wetsuits at one time except rich people. I did a sailing course and neither the participants or instructors had wetsuits. They were massively expensive.

Ah, that would be the primary school trip to the local Abbatoir. We all got a ( literal) bull’s eye to bring home to dissect. Someone’s dad worked there. We also went on a trip to a battery farm. Miraculously i’m not a vegan or vegetarian

Biology field trip somewhere to study a stream in the hills. My friend found 'something' threw it up to someone on the bank who passed it to a teacher (ex military) who immediately recognised it as a grenade, placed it on a stone wall and called bomb disposal. They took a look and decided that it was so unstable that it had to be blown up remotely, taking a considerable length of wall with it and sending all of the sheep for miles around running around the hills.

We didn't really recognize at the time the potential consequences if the grenade had been dropped.

This may be outing but early 90s my school decided a few classes were going to walk over to where the circus had set up in town so we could all look at the animals. I would have been around 9/10. There were no permission slips or anything, just a spur of the moment thing apparently.
A girl managed to spook a horse I was patting and it reared up kicking me in the head and knocking me to the ground. So there I am with blood pouring down my head and the guy from the circus picks me up and drives me back to school while the rest walk back. I then sat in the office still bleeding with a rag to my head while mum came to pick me up. Then off to the docs for stitches. She was so mad and I remember the doc telling her to sue the school.

Another school camp was at the base of a mountain we had to climb. My group got lost and had to sit for what felt like hours waiting to be found and to top it off I wet the bed that night. The shame of watching them drag my mattress out the next morning to dry lol

And another adventure type camp where they made us do a swimming test in the pool to see if we could swim well enough to go in the river. I could swim fine just not freestyle which everyone was doing for the test lap. I sat it out and had to wear the bright pink zinc cream at the river picnic to show I couldn't swim while nearly everyone else had yellow lol my friends thought it was hilarious as we all practically lived at the pool and they knew I could swim well enough.

Trip to iMax with Media Studies. I only recall absolute chaos. We got in to the film really late, no one knew what was going on. Turns out we were in the wrong screen. We were then let loose on to the streets of London. Mad Scottish teacher yelling constantly, I expect she had an entire bottle of wine that night. It was awful and pointless.

The highlight of one was gawping into a barrel full of fish heads in a smokehouse.

Rhyl Sun Centre (a water park.)

I can only imagine!

For added realism, the radiators were turned up in India. Simpler times.
^^

Sorry but

We went on an O level Economics trip the Ford Plant in Dagenham at about 14 - 15 and the factory workers were cat calling us.

(Girls' school)

This thread just keeps giving

We went on a residential trip to the Isle of Wight in year 7 (which was the last year of middle school in our county) and everyone got a puking bug on the last day. The bus driver decided to stop pulling over so we would make our ferry crossing and instead we were given bin liners to fill up as necessary. I still heave from the smell of a new roll.

Same trip, a girl from our school performed a strip tease in the hostel window and traumatised the other girls she was sharing with. I don't remember what happened about it but we weren't deemed old enough for a talking to about it. Just hushed horror and making her sleep in a teacher's room.

I am crying laughing at the previous poster who said their school didn't do trips because the woodwork teacher wanked off a tramp. As an adult, you can hear the fraud in it, but as a student, school lore is school lore.

6th form. Leaving 2 boys behind over 100 miles away because they hadn't counted the number of people when we first got on. Apparently the number was "about right" when we left. Yep 2% loss rate isn't too bad on a school trip is it? School didn't know about it until the next day when the boys appeared with a bill for the train ticket.

^^

This is just awful. What did the parents say? Christ almighty.

Put it this way, I never knew I had a phobia of butterflies and moths before we visited a butterfly house when I was about ten.

A massive one landed in my hair.

I remember going to Malham as a kid on a school trip, I must have been about 8.

I've still got a photo of us, it's lashing it down, we're all there in cagouls with square plastic lunch boxes. God knows why Malham, with all those huge cracks in the floor and a load of rampant 8 year olds! Steamed windows on teh bus, cold, wet, grimsville.

The teacher was obsessed with fossils though.

Sparklingbrook was the Lake District youth hostel the one at Hawkshead?

Went there when 11 for four days. It rained without stopping. The teachers got us lost in a forest and we walked about 12 miles in the pouring rain. The friend I was partnered with fell out with me. The hostel warden hated kids and was horrible.