‘Just go for it’ – Durham pupils overawed after school trip to Shetland
“SHETLAND will stay with you for a lifetime”.
Pupils from a school in the north of England have been overawed after an incredible trip to Shetland saw them encounter orcas, leap from cliffs and climb inside a wind turbine.
It was the fourth successive year that Durham Community School has chosen to eschew traditional school trip destinations such as Spain or France for Shetland instead.
And pupils were left in doubt that the school made the right choice – with one describing it as a “once in a lifetime experience”.
More than 30 students travelled north to travel to Noss and Mousa via boat, stand on the historic Jarlshof site and get up close and personal with puffins at Sumburgh Head.
The class was also hugely lucky to see orcas from the cliffs of Sumburgh during their visit.
Lucille Teasdale, one of the students on the trip, said the significance of the chance encounter was not lost on them.
“Some people have never seen them,” she told Shetland News, from their Durham class-room after the school returned earlier this week.
Teacher Julie Ryder said they were “very lucky to be up at Sumburgh when they appeared”.
This is the fourth year in a row that Belmont Community School, from County Durham, have travelled to Shetland.
What started out as an experimental visit in 2023 has become “an annual fixture” for the school and its pupils, which believes it is the only school on the UK mainland to travel yearly to Shetland.
Explaining their choice, Ryder said Shetland offered a “world-class living classroom” to the students from the north-east of England.
Pupils observed Shetland’s peat restoration work in its exploration of conservation and sustainability, and stepped inside a wind turbine to see how they work.
There was some disappointment for pupil Lucille Teasdale though – she said that though they got to put harnesses on, they “didn’t get to climb up” the turbine.
A major highlight of the trip for the school was the opportunity to go coasteering, leaping from cliff faces into the sea and swimming through caves.
The students all spoke effusively about the experience, with Harry Love saying the class “had a fun time jumping off the cliffs”.
Raymond Bone said that the colour of the water and its clearness had surprised the pupils.
“One of the caves we went in the sun was setting at a certain height, so the light was bouncing off the top of the water,” he said.
“It made it look neon green.”
The class also took boat trips out to both Mousa and Noss to observe seabirds up close, and to climb inside Mousa’s famous broch.
Teasdale said it felt like they were “surrounded by millions of birds”, and that they had gotten to see the birds diving into the water in search of fish.
Educational trips to Shetland Museum and Jarlshof also proved popular, with Ella Wheatley saying she had enjoyed getting to see what Shetlanders would have done for work in decades gone by.
She admitted that she had not known much about Shetland before the trip. “I knew Shetland was in Scotland, but that it was quite far away from Scotland,” she added.
The Durham pupils concluded their visit with a trip to St. Ninian’s Isle in Bigton, before getting the chance to explore Lerwick and its shops.
Asked what the class would say to people thinking about visiting Shetland, Wheatley said: “Just don’t think about it, go for it.”
“There’s lots of travel to get there, but when you get there it’s definitely worth it,” Teasdale added.
Ryder said the tight-knit community feeling of Shetland was hard to beat.
“We would meet people in one place and then we would meet them again somewhere else on our travels,” she said.
“People would actually come up and say, ‘you’re the class that’s come up from Durham’.
“The people are just so nice and really passionate for where they live.”
Will Durham Community School be back to make it five years in a row next year? Ryder is unequivocal in her response.
“Yes, we’re booked to come back next July. We already have it booked with the boat and the hostel.”
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