Residential Round-up

What can I say, except that I am obviously not a Knerps!*

Just come back from a three day residential with class 5 (a mixture of year 6 and 5) in Northumberland. What a fantastic experience!

For starters, I now know another class (at least by first name) so that's 40% of the school covered. But mostly it was just a masterclass on how to organise; a trip, children, etc. The whole thing went of smoothly enough, no-one was actually travel sick (for which relief much thanks) and the few that were homesick were just that: few (and homesick, yes).

On the way up from Nottingham we called in at Beamish for a few hours. Most enjoyable, if utterly unrelated to the rest of the trip, and where I learned a golden rule of residential trips - don't let the children spend all of the day's money in the sweet shop! Thankfully nobody actually made themselves sick, as I'd been labelled person most likely to help clear up given that it was my group that had (by far) the most sweets.

The main part of the residential was based from the Once Brewed Youth Hostel - very nice, food very good - we called in at the Roman Army Museum and then Vindolanda and finally, next day, to Housesteads for a stretch along Hadrian's Wall. But the highlight had to be a presentation by Jeff (of Jeff's Roman Experience) - words cannot adequately describe how much fun this was, nor how much the children got out of it. Seriously, if you haven't seen him and you intend to take school children there for an educational visit, contact the guy.

Then heading back to Nottinham, exhausted.

* For which you have to understand that there was a marketing slogan, a long time ago, for Knerps umbrellas along the lines of "you can't k-nacker a k-nerps". Sorry.