Year 4 Trip to the Derbyshire Dales
All good trips have a healthy dose of reality and imagination; education mingled with copious amounts of fun; exercise and good food; delightful company and a soft and comfortable pillow to lay one’s head on after a fantastic day - and happy memories on one’s return. We were fortunate to have all of these and were blessed with good weather to boot. Listening to young and enthusiastic Methodists inventing new hymns at Cliff College, our home base once again, may have helped.
Reality certainly kicked in early – on the first day, in fact at glorious Chatsworth House. Among its many other superb attractions, Devonshire’s pile has a milking parlour with full auditorium so that the townies can see what goes on every day on a dairy farm at 0530 and 1600 hours. These lovely creatures produce milk to order at certain times - but they also produce large amounts of waste products from another orifice at others. However, we won’t dwell on cow poo because it was off to the boarding house to ablute ourselves, eat and play traditional Mr Monk inspired games such as dropping an egg from a great height to see if it will break!? and building a bridge from three sheets of newspaper to see if it will hold the weight of a marker pen.
Sleep rather got in the way of all this jollity, but sleep year 5 did. My wife and I were at the girls’ end of the building which always reminds us of the happy time we spent running the Girls’ boarding house at Northbourne Park in Kent. Unlike Northbourne, Grosvenor girls can sleep for England - I wonder which of their parents they have inherited the sleep gene from? We don’t need any answers on a post card other than to say it was “Marvellous.”
The next day served up a full-monty breakfast and the stunning walk along Froggatt Edge before descending through the woods to the river. Mrs Butcher challenged our observation skills by asking us to note the change in flora and fauna along the way. She also managed to provide the largest ant colony anyone has ever seen. Where she kept it in her ruck sack, we shall never know. The Geographer amongst the party became terribly passionate about fossilised deltas and coral reefs forming the millstone Grit dark peak and the contrasting limestone based white peak. Some of the captive audience tried to look interested - a well-practised trait of pupils who go to a very good school – but fortunately an imaginary lunch bell was ringing in everyone’s ears and so it was off to the cricket field boundary to dine. The aptly named Mr Miles said we had walked about 8 of his namesakes that day.
That evening, tired and exhausted pupils were taken out for a run around by Mr Jacks. These Old Oakhamian’s never stop do they - if I were you, I would go to Uppingham or Stamford for a rest. Sleep was, once again, a blessed relief - and once again, the Nottingham lasses went into their 8 hour coma, before rising cheerily for more brekkies and a trip down a large hole in the ground known as the Blue John mine. Fortunately, the Geographer didn’t say too much - he was too busy negotiating the 245 steps - and that was just down!
Then, all too quickly, it was back for lunch, a quick and efficient pack up - and home to Grosvenor to prepare for another week of fun and frolics. Well done Mrs Monk, her helpers and year 4. When’s the next one? Mr Jackson
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