Airedale Academy's Norwegian Geography Expedition
Airdale Academy recently embarked on their third school trip with European Study Tours, this time, Norway was their choice of destination. See below to see what they had to say about their Norwegian Geography adventure!
This is the third year we have used European Study Tours consecutively for our trip abroad and we did so with full confidence based on the success of the other trips to Florida and Iceland. I’d like to thank you formally for providing our students with another trip of a lifetime, which they will be hard-pressed to match.
The location was perfect. Flåm itself had very few people in it and it was almost like it was our own private village. The scenery was stunning and was commented on by many of the students walking around the hotel’s garden. Because we arrived at night, it only really dawned on the students how jaw-dropping the place was when I pointed out the outline of the mountain’s edge in the night sky during our night walk and how they were at the bottom of a valley surrounded by mountains at either side; they couldn’t wait to get up the next morning to see it in daylight.
The activities were out-of-this-world amazing. The students really enjoyed the Flåmsbana Railway with its antique carriages up to Myrdal. The snowfall was that heavy that the snow was at window-level! The timings worked out extremely well; as soon as we got off the train at Myrdal, the next train was about 15 minutes away, so it gave students enough time to take photos and throw a few snowballs! At Finse, the visibility was perfect. The students made it onto the lake to make snowmen and a snow bunker (I can’t honestly say it was an igloo!) as well as the obligatory snowball fight! We had positioned ourselves on a mound of snow, so we also ended up using it as a slide, which the students really enjoyed. I’m really glad that the team at EST helped us to change the timings of the train, because the weather turned just as the train arrived to take us back to Myrdal and I think it would have been difficult to contain the students in a snow storm for four hours! On the final full day, the students took the fjord cruise to Gudvangen.
The fjord cruise itself was worth the trip alone; the boat was electric, so it was absolutely silent except for the trickle of the water passing by. The boat was 
certified for 400 passengers, however on the outbound journey to Gudvangen, there were only about 50 extra passengers in addition to us. On the way back, it was only our school on the boat, which made it extra special! The Viking Village was also a fantastic addition to the itinerary and very well received by the students. The tour guide kept the students interested throughout and one of them even mentioned “Sir, he’s really good; he hasn’t even said ‘er’ or ‘um’ once!” The food was fantastic and after the tour the students were treated to axe throwing and archery, as well as keeping the 
campfire going. Whilst we were there, there was a small avalanche, which we found out afterwards was a daily occurrence! I had brought some activities to keep the students going between the Viking Village and waiting for the boat to arrive, as the boat was six hours away. However, I was slightly shocked to receive a phone call from another member of staff, who had gone back to the quayside slightly earlier, that the boat had already arrived and the students had been doing axe throwing for around four hours straight; I couldn’t believe it was 5.30pm already! Not even the storms rolling through could dampen their spirits and they got back out to carry on straight away.
Already two parents have e-mailed me:
‘Just wanted to say many thanks for your excellent planning and enthusiasm to enable my daughter to have fantastic memories of Norway. I was in awe of the pictures you posted.’
‘I just wanted to say ‘Thank You!’ for looking after the kids in Norway, they are still raving about how great it was!’
I cannot really take credit for this. The tour ran like clockwork once again, from the moment the coach arrived at school to pick us up, to the moment it dropped us off back home, and it was all down to the hard work of European Study Tours
Steve Miller
Head of Science
Airedale Academy
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