School Camp

A Memory of Dundry.

Our school, Park Modern Secondary, was situated in Barking Essex just outside of the east end of London. Each year, we had school camp at Sweets farm on the top of Dundry Hill, where we would camp for two weeks. We were told repeatedly by our teachers that we were over 600 feet above sea level (why, I'll never know but it seemed important to them) and we soon found out how high that was because we walked everywhere and that meant 600 feet down in the morning and 600 feet back up at night. Buses were forbidden. I remember walking to Winford Market, Maisonal Tump where we all stripped off (compulsory) and swam in a heavily reeded pond and Cheddar Gorge. We walked one day through Bishopsworth and onto Bristol. One day we got a coach trip to Wells Cathedral and Wookey Hole. Nobody remembers the journey because we were all exhausted from all the walking we'd done the previous days. The whole thing was an adventure from star to finish and began with Rudges Removal van picking us and all our kit up at 6 in the morning outside our school and we all piled into the back of the lorry for the journey to Paddington Station where we got the train to Bristol, Temple Meads and then another lorry would take us to Dundry. Can you imagine that happening now in the over cossetted world we live in? Other coach trips took us to a battery farm where we watched the horrendous conditions for the hens. A day at Bath and swimming in the hot spring is something I'll never forget but most of all I remember the route marches and we all came home fitter than butchers dogs. Great, great days.

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