Hello Beverley Grammar!
This is Bartek K and Josh H, two students currently in year 9, who took part in the French trip on the last week of the school year. It was a fantastic 4 days, where we learned a lot about French culture, history, and made lots of new friends.
Day 1
On the first day, we made the gruelling whole day journey to France. Although it was trying, we had lots of food to keep us going, and we also stopped at a service station to down even more grub! After 6.5 hours in the coach, we arrived at the ferry dock in Dover, and made the journey by sea, from Dover to Calais. Once we reached Calais, we returned onto the coach for the final leg of the journey, about an hour’s drive from the ferry to our hotel.
Day 2
On day 2, we went to the sea life centre, where we saw many varieties of sea life that we had never seen before! Some of the best sea life we saw, in my opinion, were the sharks and all the large fish. Also, we liked the colourful reefs and sea turtles. After that, we went to watch the seal show, where the talented seals displayed the stupendous tricks.
Secondly, we went to the sweet factory, where the owner showed us how to make homemade sweets, before letting us taste some. They tasted great!
After that, we went to the chocolate factory, where the owner also showed us how to make delicious chocolate, before letting us taste a sample of this delightful product. Then everyone spent their dosh on the chocolate in scoffed it down on the way back to the hotel. Once we got to the hotel, we ate another scrumptious meal provided by the staff.
Finally, we relaxed outside the hotel until sunset and went to bed, ready for another exhilarating day in france.
Day 3
Today was the academic part of our trip-but don’t worry it’s not as it sounds. During day 3 we visited 3 war memorials- day 3 and 3 memorials? But anyway this was a great part of the trip as it was informative, but we learnt it the fun way. Now the first memorial was an underground bunker that was home to one of the large land to land guns employed by the French in WW1. However, the best part of this memorial was the fact that we were very privileged to be graced by the presence of an experienced veteran. This veteran had decided to create a documentary on his time as a pilot: and luckily we were included in this which was a greatly appreciated opportunity.
The second memorial that we visited was a bunker that had been used by the Germans as their centre for production of the new V series weapons-(mainly the V2 rockets).It was an extremely informative tour that was reinforced with audio. We were unfortunate to not have the opportunity to visit the store as it was full of great merchandise.
Yet again we returned to the hotel more informed than before. We had our dinner before embarking on another trip to the beach, were we occupied ourselves with rugby, Frisbee and also water much to Mrs Groak’s detest.
Day 4
We went to a place called St Joseph’s Village this morning which was a mini French town created for students to visit. It was good to be able to see lots of France in one go and they had amazing pommes frites (chips if you don’t know!)
We visited a boulangerie this afternoon and tried fresh croissants and pain au chocolate after making some croissants and playing rugby with the dough!! Great fun! Most of our croissants looked like crabs!!
We had a BBQ and disco at the hotel on the night and even Mrs Groak and Mrs Good joined in – how embarrassing!
Day 5
Today was our last in the neighbouring country of France, and whilst on the way to the ferry we stopped off at the Hyper-Market…I thought that Asda was cheap. We spent 2 hours browsing the hundreds of stores that were at our disposal. However we had a slight worry when one of our members was unable to find his way out. Half an hour late we set off with a sense of dread- had we missed our ferry? Luckily we arrived, and with a great sense of relief, went through customs and boarded our ferry. After the 90 minute ferry ride we set off from Dover on our long journey home. We stopped off at the services for some needed rest-and food, there’s nothing like a good KFC or Mcdonalds. We set off on the final leg of our journey to school. After about an hour, we arrived back at school and were welcomed by parents- who we ‘missed’ loads.