Le retour

And so all good things must come to an end it is said.

An earlier wake up than normal (6.45am) followed by a final room inspection was precisely NOT what the doctor ordered. Nevertheless, nobody wanted to miss our train crossing. One final breakfast of croissants and baguettes was savoured; the children unanimously agreed that such delicacies should be provided at home every morning forthwith – sorry folks at home!

Before journeying to the tunnel crossing, there was one final chance to enjoy all that is wonderful in French culture: a town market. Specifically in this case, the market town of Eu. You may be wondering how to pronounce these two vowels; well several children did it perfectly the evening before when seeing the snails and frog legs for the first time.

Here at the market town, we would have time to explore traditional stalls and practise our quickly improving French.

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What was the most popular buy you ask? Not French produce but instead a bouncy ball on an elastic string for the cool price of €3. “The guy selling them made a lot of money today,” observed Jonas. But, more than anything, it was lovely to see these young travellers enjoying the experience.

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Luck was on our side as we sped down the motorway free of traffic and Mr Madden’s shifty looks were not dwelt upon too closely by immigration, all meaning that we were able to catch earlier trains crossing La Manche. Before we knew it, we were back at school by 3pm, slightly catching the parents’ ‘holiday’ short.

Sad to end this experience but overjoyed to see loved ones, we bid farewell to each other – until the Summer Fair tomorrow at least 😉

This is the final blog post. Thank you children for your positivity, your energy, your laughter and your love. Thank you parents for enabling this experience to happen and for reading these posts – please do share them with your children. Finally, and importantly, thank you to the staff who left their families for a week and worked very long hours to make this trip such a success – you’ve been brilliant.