End of Year Trips' Week 2024

Belhaven Children enjoy End of Year Trips

At the end of the academic year, each year group in the school is taken on a trip with overnight stays in camping grounds, Halls of residence or Youth Hostels. Each trip contains some form of academic interest but the main theme is enjoyment and this year was certainly no exception.

Choose which year group you would like to view; some write-ups by the children and a slide show in each. Enjoy!

Form 1 - Belfast

Summer Trip Form 1 2024

Form 2 - Bisley, Whithaugh Park & Foxlake

Summer Trip Form 2 2024

Form 3 - Loch Insh Outdoor Centre

Summer Trip Form 3 2024

Form 4 - York

Read some brief accounts of Form 4's trip to York...

The York Dungeons were scary but also quite interesting. In the Jorvik Centre we saw the world’s largest fossilised poo. Also at Jorvik we got in a carriage and went on a tour of a Viking village. At Dig we had a look at different time periods and then went and dug some of the things up. The traditional sweet shop was good with a wide array of sweets. The York Chocolate Story was also really good - we learnt about different people and what chocolate they made.

Fun fact: in Japan there are over 750 types of kitkats, one of them being smoked salmon!!

Alice L

York Dungeon was my favourite part. The scariest room was the plague doctor where Oak got his heart pulled out! My favourite room was the one with the witch. It was very scary, but I really enjoyed it. She magically appeared in front of you.

Toby D

The York Dungeons was definitely the scariest part of York. In the witch room, everyone screamed and I didn’t watch but I still screamed with everyone else.

The Jorvik Viking centre was a very fun ride but most people didn’t like the smells. We also got to see the world’s biggest fossilised poo ever found. On the ride, we saw people playing games and dying their clothes and selling food and shoes.

Sylvia G

The best part was being in our hostel room, where we stayed up a lot later then when we were supposed to knocking on the wall that joined to the boys’ room. They have some anger issues at 11 o’clock at night, wow!

My favourite part was the York Chocolate Story where we made our own chocolate lollies and saw the whole history of chocolate and got to eat lots of it. Chocolate without any butter and sugar in it is absolutely disgusting!!! Would not recommend!

So, the 2024 York trip was the most fun ever and I would definitely recommend!!!

Holly H

During our York trip in Form 4, we had a bit too much fun.

Let me introduce the funniest part:
It was in the dorms at Safestay, Micklegate York. We were next to the boy's dorm, so we all heard everything. In the middle of the night, I heard knocking from the boy’s dorm. They were SO annoying, they didn’t even stop, then all of a sudden someone knocking a bit too hard and woke the person above me! That was the funniest bit of all of York.

This next part is about The Viking Centre:
There was this carnival ride (it was quite slow) and it went around the place talking about things what Vikings did on a daily basis. At the end our teacher (Mrs Townshend, who is the best teacher in the world) brought us to this place where we made a coin by stamping it with a stamper with a print on it. By the way, the smells on the ride were not good. We passed this guy (they are not real) on the toilet and it smelled DISGUSTING!

Next let me introduce the scariest part:
It was The York Dungeons! Most people cried because they were so scared. My opinion on the scariest part of the Dungeons was the witch. The witch was in the cage then the lights flickered off, next she was in a different cage. This was the scariest part of all, the lights flickered off then she was out of the cage and in front of everyone in scary poses. There was also this part where it was about the plague. This nun took one of the audience and put her in this chair and covered the chair with a curtain and, ...... well I won’t say anything else because you, yes you, need to go to the York to see for yourself.

Isobel Wright

In my opinion York Dungeons was the most amazing part of York for several reasons, first, it was absolutely terrifying, second, it was gruesome and third it was really EXCITING!!!

Coming a close second place in top scariest thing in York, was the ghost walk. We were taken around the streets in York learning about it’s dark past, ghosts, murderers, pets, highway robbers, vikings and romans all included in the full story of York. Despite all the haunted streets of York, the views from the top of the Minster were outstanding, the river, the architecture, the wall and the parks were all so beautiful and unique. Shockingly, there was a museum with a street in it so that concludes our adventure to York.

Sophia D

Summer Trip Form 4 2024

Form 5 - The Old Border

Form 5 Trip to Hadrian’s Wall and Beamish Open Air Museum
By Finlay, Monty & Jules

Form 5 first went to the Roman Army Museum. We had a Latin lesson where they told us how to count to 3 and how the Latin letters were different from English letters. We then visited the rest of the museum where we saw full scale models of Roman soldiers. On the hill beside Housesteads Fort, we ate our lunch and after we went for a walk on Hadrian’s wall and saw a milecastle. The wall was really small, but it had originally been 6 meters tall! We saw where the Sycamore Gap tree had been. We felt very sad.

Later, we went to Beamish Open Air Museum. After fish and chips for dinner, we put things in our tents and went on a walk around the museum. We played a game of racing reed boats in a river! We saw a quadruple rainbow. It was amazing! After that we went in our tents and slept.

The next morning, we made our own breakfast. It was sausages and bacon. After breakfast, we visited the drift mine and they told us that the miners could hardly see anything. The man also said that they were not very well paid. We also saw different types of lights that the miners used in the mine.

After that, we went into the colliery village where we saw some canaries and the vegetable gardens. I learned, at Beamish, that if you don’t eat vegetables, you get scurvy, and your gums start to bleed, and your teeth start to fall out! After this, we ate our lunch in a tent.

That afternoon, we went to the World War II farm, and we saw some cockerels, some pigs and some birds. We listened to a man dressed up as an Italian prisoner of war and he told us all about the Second World War. We had an ice cream. Some Form 5s chose lemon sherbet, some blue raspberry, Monty is the only one who chose rhubarb and custard and some, including me, chose chocolate fudge.

On the last morning there was still time for a train ride on the Pockerley Wagon Way, a visit to the dentist, the Cooperative, the garage, a funfair ride and, of course, the Jubilee Confectioner.