Year 5 visited Bosville in Normandy last week and what a brilliant trip we had! We had chilly but dry weather, a wonderful farm to stay on with horses, goats, chickens, alpacas, llamas and pot-bellied pigs, wonderful food cooked by Olivier our host and chef, lots of exciting trips, lots of French to speak, and our pen-pals to meet at last!

We spent ages trying to decide the best bits…Our first choice was meeting our pen-pals. We spent some time asking questions, then played games with them, including “What’s the time Mr Wolf?” (which we played in French and English) then spent some time sharing local food that the parents generously provided, including artisan cheeses, breads, apple tartes and juice, and had our lunch with them. It was excellent practice for our French. Hotly contested second choices were the bakery, where we learned how to roll croissants and bread, the chocolaterie, Etretat, where we saw the amazing cliffs painted by Monet and visited the Maison d’Arsene Lupin, the goat farm, where we learnt about milk production, cheese making and met the goats, our farm and the French market where we managed to spend our remaining euros!

We have learnt so much apart from confidence in speaking French. We learnt how to make bread, croissants, cheese, sailing knots and chocolate. We discovered that actually a lot of us do like goat’s cheese! We had to manage our belongings and friendships, sharing rooms and food – in fact we were actually so busy there simply wasn’t time to miss anyone back home!