23-07-2025
Readers share memories of school trips, before the arrival of health and safety
Packed lunches, bumpy coach rides, the buzz of excitement… School trips are etched into many people's childhood memories. Whether it was eating a soggy sandwich on the steps of a castle or losing a welly boot in a mud-soaked campsite, these outings offered a wonderful mix of freedom, fun and friendship.
Yet with rising costs and increasingly strict safeguarding rules, half of state school heads now report cutting back on trips. Travel writer Sally Howard recently considered what youngsters stand to lose if the classic school trip falls by the wayside, and her article prompted Telegraph readers to share fond memories of their own adventures.
'We were more interested in romance than flora and fauna'
In 1954, reader C Brooks was just 11 years old. But he still vividly recalled a school trip to Derbyshire. 'We visited the Blue John Cavern, the steel works and went down a coal mine,' he wrote. 'Best of all, I got to hold hands with a girl from another school who was staying in the hostel! All that and it only cost my mum £12.'
Another reader, Ivan, also met a girl on a school trip – she would end up becoming his wife. 'It was the best thing that ever happened to me,' he said, of his year five geography trip to Duntisbourne Abbots in Gloucestershire. 'As I recall, we were more interested in romance than flora and fauna.'
For many, it's the simple thrill of a day away from the classroom that remains most vivid. Uncomplicated times, filled with small joys and lasting impressions.
Emma Dixon was at school in the 1970s and 1980s and remembered trips to Hadrian's Wall, the open-air Beamish Museum and various Northumberland castles. 'It was all very exciting, a day off school and singing on the bus,' she said. 'It was also the only time I was allowed crisps in my packed lunch box. Happy days!'
'Our teacher took us to Dartmoor for a walk… in January'
Michael D Jackson offered a similarly nostalgic picture: 'A 1980s end-of-school year trip [took us] from Sheffield to Yorvik Viking Centre and the York Railway Museum. Packed lunch on the river, the smell of flat Coca Cola and ready salted crisps on the coach home, while we passed around the Donkey Kong game. Brilliant stuff!'
John Devon shared his memory of a grammar school trip to Dartmoor. He says: 'In the late Sixties, our school took a coachload of kids from Devon to Dartmoor for a walk… in January. The wind howled, the sleet was nearly horizontal and the river we were supposed to cross was a savage torrent swollen by weeks of rain.
'We plodded behind our irrepressible teacher who strode happily along, oblivious to the mutinous grumblings behind him. My chum looked about him and wondered aloud if the Duke of Edinburgh Award was ever given posthumously.
'Later I inspected my lunch – a sandwich all of a quarter inch in depth, provided by the school, and resolved to do better in the future. Happy memories…'
It seems health and safety was usually something of an afterthought. Mabel Burlington commented: 'In 1982, I went on a Geography field trip. Great fun. One evening, the teachers walked to the pub leaving the school minivan in our camping field with keys in the ignition! Of course this was an open invite for the lads (15 years old) to jump in and drive round the field. Fortunately, no harm was done and the van was parked up by the time teachers returned.'
N White added: 'Teaching in an African country in the 1960s I recall a trip to a factory making corrugated roofing which contained asbestos. Nobody batted an eyelid. There was also an occasion halfway up an extinct volcano when a lad managed to get his leg down a smoking fumarole. And then there was the time a pupil threw me across a path out of reach of a black mamba hanging out of a tree. What would have happened to me now leading such dangerous expeditions? The pupils were having the time of their lives.'
'People didn't get out much – it was a big treat to go to the seaside'
For reader Kathleen Learmonth, school trips to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and to the Margate seaside lingered in the memory.
'I remember school trips as the sunlit uplands,' she said. 'We went on a double-decker bus down to Margate and spent the day collecting shells and seaweed. It took you so out of the classroom. It was just exciting.
'In those days people didn't get out much. It was a big treat to go to the seaside or to go to London. It helps to spark different interests in children.'
New discoveries abounded. Neil K W Jones wrote: 'Back in the late 1950s, at junior school, we enjoyed a coach trip to the Isle of Wight. The highlight was Carisbrooke Castle. I had saved from my packed lunch a very large red apple for the coach trip home. It turned out to be a giant tomato!'
Jimmy Christian added: 'All our field trips were designed to be educational – to see how whisky was made, to visit historical battle sites, livestock farms, hydroelectric plants… Best was the distillery – not that we got a taste, although the teacher did, fair play to him.'
'My grandson's school trip to Costa Rica cost over £5,000'
In addition to sharing their stories, many readers expressed concerns about the spiralling costs of 21st-century school trips. Ms. Learmonth contrasted her own experiences with those of her daughter, which she called a 'total racket'.
She said: 'They sleep them eight or 10 to a room and feed them plain pasta and still charge you £1,500. All of the mothers I've spoken to about this agree.'
Phil Parkinson added: 'My grandson, aged 15, is off to Costa Rica for a month on a school trip next week. It cost over £5,000. His mother, a single mum, was determined he should have the opportunity of a lifetime. Though I applaud the concept of the trip, its cost makes it almost elitist.'
An anonymous reader, whose grandson had to miss a class trip to Australia due to the prohibitive cost, argued that school trips have 'gone past the pale of ridiculousness' and should either be abolished or forced to be UK jaunts.
Former teacher Rebecca Jacobs saw both value and strain in the current school trip landscape, but warned that if they continue on the current trajectory, they will cease to exist.
She said: 'School trips are really valuable for kids. However, companies now charge the earth and families can't afford them [and] the legal responsibility is vast [for] staff. Trips will die as they put too much burden on everyone.'
