Wow, weren’t we blessed with the most wonderful weather for our Basingstoke Trail trip today? Not only was the sun shining but the children were absolutely phenomenal throughout the course of the day too. They were respectful, polite and showed a superb intrigue in our local area. Because of this, we feel they were able to gain lots from the trip and will hopefully be able to impart lots of this knowledge when they are next in town with you, further demonstrating what a fantastic day we all had. The children were genuinely surprised to notice and learn so many new facts about our city centre which they had never spotted before yet walked past numerous times!

Our Basingstoke trail included:

- Admiring the new Lego exhibition within the Willis Museum - this went down a treat!

- Exploring the beautifully historic St Michaels Church, which has links to both WW2 and the Tudor period (previous topics that we have studied this year).

- Learning about the tragic tale of Mrs Blunden who is said to have been buried near the Holy Ghost Cemetery. We also visited Thomas Burberry’s grave which is located here too.

-  Noticing the informative blue plaques dotted around town referencing the importance of a number of locations relating to great historical figures such as Jane Austin.

And these are to name just a few of the historical and geographical activities we took part in today. We also enjoyed chatting with two local artists who had been commissioned to paint the large flowerbeds outside Thomas Burberry’s first shop (what used to the British Heart Foundation at the top of town). They enjoyed sharing their vision with us and explaining how the aim is to bring vibrancy and colour to our local town.

The general public were also in great spirits too and were really happy to see our children out and about enjoying their local area. As part of our Geography curriculum, the children were able to broaden their skills further by conducting a fieldwork study. This involved asking members of the public their thoughts and opinions about Basingstoke. With adult supervision at all times, the children were incredibly brave and approached a wide range of people from our local community in order to gauge a broad data sample. We can’t wait to analyse our results and begin to make some generalisations about the local people within our community and what Basingstoke has to offer.

Take a look at our photos to see what a fantastic day we had J