School demanding packed meals for 18 hr bus trip

[Snoopmummy]

DC is off on a school trip involving an 18 hour coach journey. School is demanding we drop children off in the evening having fed them (fine), equipped with nut free snacks (makes sense). We have also been asked to provide TWO meals: a packed breakfast and a packed lunch.

That means breakfast will be consumed 13 hours after they set off and lunch will be something like 17 hours later. Is there any food that can safely last for that length of time in an insulated bag or flask? DC does not like dried fruit or cereal bars.

AIBU to consider asking for the risk assessment over this and suggesting we equip them with money to get food on the way as they will need to stop anyway?!

Add a tenner on? So who would organise the food at the service station? The teachers? While they've got nothing else to do

They'll stop at services but probably only for the toilet. Please no hot food or drinks - the mess, the burns!

Lots of school trips take coaches. . School ski trip is usually feb half term and it's VERY expensive to fly.

Or a WW1 Battlefields trip. Flying not really practical for that, and having the coach allows them to visit different locations during the day.

I've seen parties of probably primary aged children coming back on an evening ferry to Dover. They were evidently intended to sleep on the coach, many of them had changed into pyjamas or 'loungewear' and some were trailing sleeping bags or rugs.

And coaches are air-conditioned these days - the food isn't going to get very warm.

They won’t need foods that are that high in calories as all they are doing is sitting on a coach for hours, they’re not gonna be burning off much energy!

The trip has been outsourced to a travel agency so I suspect we are paying over the odds already and air fares over half term would have been even more but I wanted them to go with their friends and have an experience that they won’t have with our family. To the PP suggesting I remove them from the trip, surely that’s even more hysterical than my questioning the food safety implications?! 😅

Neither the children going nor the teachers are particularly hard done by, not even when up against parents like me! I didn’t have a ‘go’ at anyone at the school, I was canvassing views about likelihood of food staying fresh. DC asked for pesto pasta but sounds like they will have a cheese sandwich.

(To a PP, I am quite fun at parties and signature trick is too filthy to share on here 😉 but it’s dry Jan for me so perhaps that has skewed my perspective…)

Thanks for the helpful suggestions, particularly from teachers with experience on long trips like this.

Most school trips are outsourced to agencies like NST, you won’t be paying over the odds that’s perfectly normal

18 hours on a coach? 18? That's sounds hellish for the children and teachers.

Also OP, pesto is nuts.

As in, CONTAINS nuts!

Never a true word said whispered under ones breath, by teachers since education began, at parents worrying about nothing and making a simple request into massive fucking overkill requiring a fucking risk assessment for a fucking sweaty sandwich, as if kids aren't germ-laden hobbits already with stomachs strong enough to manage all sorts of crap the other 365 days a year
FML.

My thoughts exactly, but so much better written

Who, for the love of God, thought it would be a good idea to take 9 year olds on this trip ?????

Surely this is the kind of trip that heroic teachers take 13 or 14 yr olds on, but imaging herding a coach full of 9 year olds on and off a ferry, through French service stations and so forth

Also, please do a dummy run of pasta in a flask for 18 hours op, it'll be a complete disaster. Bad enough after one hour, you do know what happens to pasta that's been overcooked, yes?

The trip has been outsourced to a travel agency so I suspect we are paying over the odds already

It's not over the odds OP it's just what it costs. The alternative would be teachers booking 40 individual flights and everything else - this is massively unrealistic. The market amongst educational tour companies is actually very competitive as there are several who all do the same things. Also, when I've organised trips you haven't actually been to be place you are booking often (maybe destination but individual hotel etc) and you need someone at a tour company to manage this for you, point out pitfalls and help with the accommodation etc. we've all had a slightly disappointing holiday. Imagine experiencing this with 40 other people's kids in tow ...

Contains pine nuts. I researched this the other day due to allergies in the nursery I work in. Found a hospital website that said that "Pine nuts should be counted as seeds for the purposes of allergies".

We had this when my son went on a long coach journey when skiing with the school (although they could buy something on the ferry crossing).

I just packed him off with some fruit and then unhealthy packet food (ie chocolate croissants, biscuits, crisps) It doesn't hurt as a one off.

However, I didn't give him sweets and energy drinks as they wanted the kids to sleep on the coach!!!!

The outsourcing to travel companies is totally normal. You can't really expect teachers to book individual flights, coaches, ferry crossing etc. I don't think that's a rip off, that's what it costs, though they often try and upsell 'packages' which are a rip off, particularly for ski trips. Go to Decathlon yourself and pay half. Although my son's school is actually taking the y7/8/9 ski trip on easyJet at Feb half term, which astounds me, but there you go, some kids (including mine) really are that pampered and special. They'll still have to eat crap on the journey though, probably Pringles on the plane.

What is very unusual though, I have to say OP, is doing this kind of school trip with primary aged kids? Is this in the UK? Have you thought the through for a 9 year old? They normally go to France or the isle of wight on a ferry for the day or 2 nights in a forest with PGL or something.

Why don't you do your own research? Goggle is your friend!

And then you've got the parents demanding to see the risk assessment for Haribo and flapjacks, complaining that there wasn't a table with linen for Barnaby to lay out his hors d'ouvre, salmon en croute with baby potatoes and spring vegetables and chocolate ganache cake or Ophelia to have her lobster bisque and quinoa salad, that there was a child sat next to them who had two Dairylea Dunkers and they even shared half a packet of midget gems, the children were expected to make their own beds and clean up after themselves, somebody was told off for trying to access the black run when they're already nearly at County Level for swimming, there wasn't a mobile signal so they couldn't be called in the middle of the day...grandma is crying because Hortensia didn't update her TikTok for 3 days and thought that meant she must be dead and why is it that x child was able to stay up with the adults when they had a reaction to the pine nuts in Caligula's exploding pesto salad but Phyllida was callously told to stop talking to everybody about how you die from allergies and go to sleep when everybody knows Auntie is an eminent professor in the world of IG-E allergies, so was only sharing her knowledge...

Don’t take a thermos , it needs washing out which may be difficult. Just take packaging that can be thrown away given she will be gone a week.

I'm a walker. When I go on a long one i usually go for much of the stuff already mentioned. Fruit (with sandwich bag for peel/cores), flapjacks, cake/biscuits, sealed pain o chocolate things. If I want something that resembles real food I take a tuna meal with me. They're in the supermarket next to the tinned fish. They look like some kind of cat food container but have tuna, some kind of sauce, cous cous/pasta/beans, and veg. Used to come with disposable spoon but don't any more.

I'd be pulling them off of such a trip. Nowhere is worth 18 hours in a coach.