‘What was the most bizarre school trip you ever went on?’ – 23 excursions that were more eccentric than educational

It’s still the holidays, but our thoughts will unfortunately be turning to the looming day when we have to stop eating and drinking anything that comes to hand and return to work and school. Woe is all of us.

They’ve been mulling over the alleged best days of our lives on the AskUK subreddit after Flowerofthesouth88 posted this story about their time in education:

What was the most bizarre school trip your school went to and why? In year 11, we went on a trip to a farm, a historical site, or a similar location. I forgot now, but I remember straight after our teacher, who drove a minibus, joked with us about who wanted to go to Morrisons supermarket.

Obviously, we said no because we thought it was a joke. When we turned into the Morrisons car park, we all went in with the teacher and saw her doing her shopping as she wanted, just us following the teacher and seeing her get the groceries. If it were today, I think she would be in trouble.

It does seem unlikely much was learned on that excursion, unless it was intended as a practical lesson in household budgeting rather than an excuse to fill the minibus with shopping.

Plenty of other people chipped in with their own weird trips, like these…

1.

‘Dumping us in a cabbage field in Cambridgeshire somewhere for us to ‘orienteer’ our way to some undisclosed location. A farmer rescued us. Teachers were at the pub.’
–Expression-Little

2.

‘We had a similar thing, we were all about 10 years old. Dumped in the woods with maps and compasses wearing our cagoules and really excited to navigate ourselves alone to the meeting point – which was the pub car park where the teachers had spent the afternoon.’
–moreidlethanwild

3.

‘Not really bizarre but in year 8/9 we went to France for the day to ‘practice our French’.

We actually were just taken to a shopping centre for a few hours, bought what we wanted, didn’t speak a word of French, and then went home.’
–Any-Talk-2307

4.

‘The maths dept at my school were jel of the trips other depts got to take, so they organised a maths trip to France for a day. They did some token maths questions on the ferry, but aside from that it was just a quick jaunt to the hypermarché in Calais.’
–thymeisfleeting

5.

‘Ahh yes. We went on a trip to the first World War sites in secondary school and came home via Calais’s finest booze supermarkets.’
–hhfugrr3

6.

‘Pretending to be Victorian schoolchildren for a day.’
–Intelligent_Lab_234

7.

‘Yeah, went to Southwell workhouse. I was left-handed, so got slagged off by these geriatric actors the entire day for writing with the devil’s hand.’
–RiceeeChrispies

8.

‘I remember doing that. I was picked to be switched and was taken out into the corridor where they told me to yell out ow whenever they hit the table.’
–UnnecessaryStep

9.

‘A sewage treatment plant. No idea why, it’s been 25 years and I still remember the smell.’
–LiorahLights

10.

‘Same! We also did one to the rubbish tip. I think our teachers just hated us.’
–non-diggety

11.

‘Box factory a la Simpsons. Still got the box they gave us 30 years later!’
–Kibethewalrus

12.

‘We went on a school trip to my house! It was an old farm house with a mysterious (possibly burial) mound in the back garden. We also went on a school trip to another kid’s house because his mum owned a fax machine. Small town things.’
–abananatotheleft