Excursions, Trips & Tours

The school offers many opportunities to explore the world beyond school for educational, cultural and recreational purposes. 

In the senior school, the annual ski-ing holiday enriches the Sports programme and there are Exchange visits to Germany and France for older girls and French and German holidays for younger Year groups. There are frequent UK visits to supplement the curriculum, such as Geography field trips, History trips to castles and houses, Business Studies’ visits to organisations and theatre visits.

In 2006 the first overseas Sports tour took senior girls to South Africa to play hockey and netball.  For staff and students alike it was a life-changing trip as, in addition to the sports events and training, excursions and visits to many wonderful places were incorporated into the tour.  The girls visited Robben Island, the Cape of Good Hope, Speirs Winery, a cheetah sanctuary and the townships of Langa.

In March 2007, the boys followed suit with their first rugby tour to Holland.  Again, the sport was accompanied by trips, including a tour around the city and a visit to the Nemo Science Museum. 

The Duke of Edinburgh’s programme provides expedition training locally and further afield in the UK and overseas.

Every Prep Department class has an outing each term, always enriching the curricular programme for the term’s work. In addition, older children are encouraged to participate in the Spring Activity weekend, which this year is being held at Sheringham, where life skills and leadership qualities are developed.

French Exchange 2007

On Sunday 4^th February, a cold and wintry day, a group of girls set out from Peterborough on the return leg of the French exchange to Lyon. We flew from Stansted laden down with heavy suitcases: our girls were not going to be caught out without the right clothes and make-up for every occasion! They had heeded our warnings and packed plenty of fleeces and pullovers, as it has been known to snow in Lyon in February. Of course they had also packed French text-books, phrase books and dictionaries to weigh them down.  The weather in Lyon, however, was rather warm for the time of year but better safe than sorry, n’est ce pas?

We had a tremendous time at the school in Lyon, taking part in classes and sampling the delights of the school ‘cantine’. In the afternoons we usually toured the city where we visited the ‘Basilique de Fourvieres’, a church on top of a hill overlooking the city, the old town with its winding streets and secret passageways (les Traboules) and the many patisseries and boulangeries on the way (just to keep up our strength of course!).

We propped up the economy of France with generous amounts of euros spent in the superb shopping centre, la Part Dieu, conveniently situated within walking distance of the school. On the Friday a coach took us and our French partners to some caves ‘grottes’ where we saw stalactites and stalagmites, pools and a ‘Sound and Light’ show. We didn’t wake the bats, and no - we weren’t really scared!  Is this the French equivalent of a Geography field trip?

The final weekend was spent ‘en famille’, and experiences were quite varied: some students were taken skiing (quelle chance) and had a fantastic time; others however decided to practise their French in different settings such as ‘At the Doctor’s’ or ‘At the Chemist’s’… In all the 2007 exchange to France was yet again a huge success and definitely improved our French.