An Amazing time In Northern France With School Part Two

As I explained in my last post, I went on a trip with the rest of my school year to Northern France (mainly Normandy and Brittany) to learn French, and had a fabulous time. Here are some more things that I really enjoyed...

The Chateau Of Fougères

The Beautiful Castle In Fougères

Fougères is a lovely town on the border of Normandy and Brittany, and it is fascinating - the castle was originally only a wooden fort, but was destroyed by King Henry II of England in 1166, and quickly rebuilt by Raoul II Baron de Fougères. The castle wasn't involved in the Hundred Years' War until 1449, when it was taken by surprise by an English mercenary. In 1488 the French troops won the castle back after a siege and the castle lost its military role. Today the castle belongs to the municipality and is one of Europe's largest medieval fortresses.

There is loads to see inside the castle, as there is just so much history to explore. We walked up one of the 13 towers and looked at the sublime views, before learning about what life was originally like in the castle and discovering cool facts about battle tactics. Something that really interested me was that French windows were slimmer than English ones, as they used crossbows for defence, whereas Englishmen used bows and arrows.

The castle also provides audio tours.


St. Hilaire-du-Harcouet Market

My friends and I had a wonderful time running around this market. Using our French skills, we bought pretty much everything! The market sold so many things from pastries to paintings, cheese to chocolates, and we wasted an awful lot of our money...

Everyone was friendly, all the food was fresh and delicious and the atmosphere was incredible. however, the best part by far was trying to haggle. I spent aaages trying to convince a man to let me have a purse for four euros instead of five! Luckily, I succeeded, and by the end of it my friends and I were in fits of laughter.

The market was probably the highlight of the whole trip, especially because a crepe with sugar was only 50 cents...

The D-Day Museum - A 360° Film

After a long drive, we were all delighted to finally get to the D-Day Museum. We didn't go through the whole museum, as we only had enough time to watch a 360° film. It was projected onto screens all around the room, and showed unbelievable film footage and pictures from the war.

It was very well put together, and included astonishing videos such as bombs falling down from aeroplanes onto land, tanks and an especially haunting one of a man having his face sewn up. The film was very moving, and afterwards I was blinking back tears.

Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach, commonly known as Omaha, was the code name for one of the five sectors of the Allied invasion of German-occupied France in the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944, during World War II. Nowadays, it a graveyard for the American soldiers of the war.

The graveyard is full of trees, plants, and rows and rows of white crosses and Stars of David for Jews. While walking around the graveyard,  I felt extremely emotional thinking about all the people who lay in the graveyard, and even cried at the anonymous graves, just thinking about the fact that no one even knew who the person was, let alone anything about them. It was lovely to see the flowers put by them, and even though we spent an hour walking by the graves, I wanted to spend the rest of the day visiting every single one.

So, those were my highlights of a brilliant trip to Northern France. Even though everything was so diverse and it was quite isolated, I still had a fantastic time and loved every second. I would definitely recommend a visit.

Read my first post on my trip to Northern France

An Amazing time In Northern France With School Part Two

As I explained in my last post, I went on a trip with the rest of my school year to Northern France (mainly Normandy and Brittany) to learn French, and had a fabulous time. Here are some more things that I really enjoyed...

The Chateau Of Fougères

The Beautiful Castle In Fougères

Fougères is a lovely town on the border of Normandy and Brittany, and it is fascinating - the castle was originally only a wooden fort, but was destroyed by King Henry II of England in 1166, and quickly rebuilt by Raoul II Baron de Fougères. The castle wasn't involved in the Hundred Years' War until 1449, when it was taken by surprise by an English mercenary. In 1488 the French troops won the castle back after a siege and the castle lost its military role. Today the castle belongs to the municipality and is one of Europe's largest medieval fortresses.

There is loads to see inside the castle, as there is just so much history to explore. We walked up one of the 13 towers and looked at the sublime views, before learning about what life was originally like in the castle and discovering cool facts about battle tactics. Something that really interested me was that French windows were slimmer than English ones, as they used crossbows for defence, whereas Englishmen used bows and arrows.

The castle also provides audio tours.

Read more »

An Amazing Time In Northern France With School (Part One)

The Chateau

Zipwire

A few weeks ago, I had the amazing experience of going on a trip to Normandy with my school to learn French. We visited lots of wonderful places in Northern France, and here are my highlights from the trip...

Accommodation
Our year stayed at Chateau Beaumont, a lovely chateau built between 1837 and 1852. It is surrounded by loads of grass and places to explore, and on some afternoons we took part in fun activities, such as tir à l'arc (archery), tyrolienne (zip wire) and escrime (fencing). All of the instructors were so much fun, made us use French as much as possible and were really encouraging - so much so that they somehow managed to get me to climb all the way to the top of an incredibly difficult climbing wall!

Our room was nice, and actually very spacious for a group of ten people. I was lucky enough to be placed with my best friends, and we had a fabulous time together.



Every night we had evening activities, such as French night (we dressed up as stereotypical French people, took part in a quiz and went down a catwalk), egg drop (we had to create a protective case for a raw egg and drop it from the top of the chateau) and a disco.

Saint. Malo
My friends and I only spent a short amount of time at Saint Malo, but we still really enjoyed ourselves. It is a perfect destination for tourists as the shops sell pretty much everything; our favourites were a fantastic chocolate shop and a VEGETARIAN SWEET SHOP - it was like a dream (we don't eat gelatine, so finding the right sweets can be a challenge).

Le Mont Saint Michel

The beach at Saint Malo is beautiful. The sand is soft and an amazing shade of yellow, and the sea was perfect and really warm. It was one of the only beaches I have ever been to which was unspoilt by rubbish and tiny fish swam around our ankles.

Mont Saint Michel
Le Mont Saint Michel is a picturesque island just off the coast of France. It is surrounded by a beautiful beach, is full of history and is visited by over three million tourists a year!

At the top of the town, there is a stunning abbey, (which unfortunately we didn't get to) and incredible views, as well as countless shops, museums and houses from the 15th and 16th centuries. There is so much to do, and so many things to see. We were told about old myths, tactics in battle and more, but the thing that interested me the most was that the shops had inspired Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter movies!

These are only some of the brilliant things which I got up to in Normandy and Brittany. Read here for part two! 

Read about the caravanning trip to France I took with my family in 2011

Read about my school trip last year - to PGL.

An Amazing Time In Northern France With School (Part One)

 The Chateau

Zipwire

A few weeks ago, I had the amazing experience of going on a trip to Normandy with my school to learn French. We visited lots of wonderful places in Northern France, and here are my highlights from the trip...

Accommodation
Our year stayed at Chateau Beaumont, a lovely chateau built between 1837 and 1852. It is surrounded by loads of grass and places to explore, and on some afternoons we took part in fun activities, such as tir à l'arc (archery), tyrolienne (zip wire) and escrime (fencing). All of the instructors were so much fun, made us use French as much as possible and were really encouraging - so much so that they somehow managed to get me to climb all the way to the top of an incredibly difficult climbing wall!

Our room was nice, and actually very spacious for a group of ten people. I was lucky enough to be placed with my best friends, and we had a fabulous time together.

Read more »

What can you learn on holiday?

Holidays are wonderful (although the build-up isn't always so great!). I love spending time with my family, travelling to new places and learning, yes, I said learning about new things.

I didn't grow up thinking that holidays were just about relaxing. Instead they were exciting, full of anything from castles and museums to lakes and mountains. We went fishing with little nets in Devon and to the magnificent Cologne Cathedral in Germany. We learnt about steering a canal boat and opening locks in Wales, and visited historic chateaux in the Loire Valley in France. Holiday time was incredibly enriching.

Of course we weren't on the go all the time. My parents were careful to make sure that we had lots of time to read, or swim or just chill. But we didn't do that all the time.

And, when I stop to think about it, the holidays I had as a child and loved, are similar to the ones we now have with our children. We travel somewhere and we shop and eat and have fun, but we also discover local museums (like At Science in Bristol, which was fantastic) and stately homes.

Sometimes we learn in different ways too - by picking up bits of a different language if we go abroad, looking at maps of where we are travelling to, or even by one-offs. The children simply loved their trip to the Harry Potter studio tour and learnt an awful lot about how films are made. Meanwhile I will always remember the thrill of Jessica realising she could actually cycle properly as she went round and round the very safe caravan park we were visiting in France some years ago. It was perfect for building up her confidence.

Of course holidays are all about trying new experiences. My son was thrilled to try out bungee jumping on a Bristol street, while my daughter loved swimming in the caves in Jamaica. We all enjoyed feeding the animals in Ireland (you can see this in the photo at the top of this piece and I think it was probably the first time that Robert, then only 2, had ever done it) as well as something completely different - the theme park rides in the USA. This is where my son discovered that he doesn't appear to feel G force!

So, holidays are fun, but they can also be so much more than that. Kids (and adults) can always learn and holidays, when you are relaxed and actually have some time to spend together, can be brilliant learning experiences. I, for one, wish we had more of them.

Do you learn on holiday, and if so, what? This post is part of the Visit Wales #Wales4Kids Family Holiday Challenge. Wales is the perfect place for a fun-filled family break.

Read about:

Our trip to Ireland

Our trip to France

Our trip to Jamaica

What can you learn on holiday?

Holidays are wonderful (although the build-up isn't always so great!). I love spending time with my family, travelling to new places and learning, yes, I said learning about new things.

I didn't grow up thinking that holidays were just about relaxing. Instead they were exciting, full of anything from castles and museums to lakes and mountains. We went fishing with little nets in Devon and to the magnificent Cologne Cathedral in Germany. We learnt about steering a canal boat and opening locks in Wales, and visited historic chateaux in the Loire Valley in France. Holiday time was incredibly enriching.

Of course we weren't on the go all the time. My parents were careful to make sure that we had lots of time to read, or swim or just chill. But we didn't do that all the time.

And, when I stop to think about it, the holidays I had as a child and loved, are similar to the ones we now have with our children. We travel somewhere and we shop and eat and have fun, but we also discover local museums (like At Science in Bristol, which was fantastic) and stately homes.
Read more »