“Any volunteers?” they ask in staff briefing.

 

I think about it, I raise an involuntary hand.

The Hotel is ‘Green Gables.’

‘That’ll be Anne of Green Gables.’ I laugh. No one else laughs. It’s an old joke, even from me - too old for our teachers anyway.

 

107 girls are going with 11 teachers.

‘It’s going to be great fun, and you are all going to be responsible. We trust you.’ A deputy head tells the pupils.

 

Five days of visits to very interesting places have been carefully planned: York, York Minster, an open top bus tour, the city walls, Pickering, Helmsley, four castles, an abbey in ruins, a museum, a farm and much more.

 

There’s a workbook to fill in full of questions and individual diaries to write to keep all the girls busy.

 

Spending money (£30 max.) and mobiles are to be handed in to group leaders.

 

They’ve got this trip down to a fine art I think. It’s been happening for years.

So the big departure day arrives. Three coaches turn up and 118 of us meet at 7:30am. A huge party of parents, some looking anxious, some looking relieved, wave us goodbye.

 

Before we reach the Great North Road, the girl behind me warns us she’s going to be sick.

 

We stop at the first service station. Our head of year bites into a baguette and swallows a tooth. She is an extremely attractive and dignified woman. She’ll be whistling instructions for five days.

 

The girls spend money like mad.

 

We stop at ‘Sea World’. The girls love all the creatures. Our first disaster happens when one girl loses her sunglasses and wants to phone home. She cries enough to drown us.

“Deal with it” I bark like a sea lion. “I’m not having this booing ruining my trip.”

 

We had been studying ‘Our day out’ by Willy Russell in English and I’d warned my group that unlike Alun Armstrong, (Mr Briggs), I would not be rescuing any hysterical girls from a cliff top even though I am more of a Mrs Kay character (kind and motherly: I like to believe anyway.)

 

We arrive at the hotel. It’s huge – a hydropathic establishment – Victorian – haunted by ghosts, of course. Some of the ceilings move when you open the doors, like in old horror films when the ceiling of a four-poster bed comes down slowly and suffocates the innocent sleeping person. Every corridor creaks like someone walking behind you.

 

Apparently, according to a bar maid, very suspect psychological treatments were performed in the rooms in the 60’s. (Electric shock treatments) and residents left completely mad. Soldiers had also been based there during the war. Maybe their spirits are the ones who return in the noughties. The girls see a man with a gun outside on the first night of course. Local Yorkshire lads congregate outside the hotel looking up at our North London lasses. I hear the hotel cook yell ‘bugger off!’

 

Our male deputy head says on the second day, ‘It’s been the longest 29hours of my life’ (and he’s got three children.)

 

Next day one maths teacher, a volleyball star, falls over on the York cobblestones and fractures a wrist. That’s bad. A small group of teachers are able to go to ‘Betty’s Tea Rooms’. That’s good. I must go back and eat my way through the menu before I die.

 

The farm visit is a revelation for city girls. We watch a cow being milked. (My own second son once asked me if they pump the milk into the cow, when we saw a similar demonstration – how sweet is that?) After stroking pigs, goats, sheep, chickens and so on two girls decide to become vegetarians. There are huge amounts of poo everywhere and everyone complains about the farm smells.

 

‘East Enders’ a must watch on the first night has long been forgotten.

 

It’s an endless round of trips to the beach, shops, Mott and Bailey castles, English Heritage, National Trust and villages, and old people looking askance saying ‘Oh no its an invasion.’

 

We are a very ‘diverse and multicultural school’ to quote our Ofsted report, but also ‘friendly’.

 

We go to a theme park and, horror of horrors, enjoy scary rides.

 

Teachers are on duty from 7am when the girls collect their picnic lunches to at least mid night when there are the real dramas. Never the less the girls seem to think they have generously paid for the teachers’ holiday.

 

Just as teachers are beginning to suffer from sleep deprivation and heat exhaustion the last night arrives and we have a Y factor talent show and disco party. The teachers perform a sort of Gilbert and Sullivan song. We sing lines mimicking the girls. It’s all very clever. The head of drama and music teacher are with us luckily. The house comes down.

 

The next day we return home. Coaches are quiet. It’s been a long journey. We have made new friends and learned a lot. ‘A significant experience, a memory for a life time for some’ says the thank you letter.

 

‘Never again’ I say, until next year’s French trip.