Year 10 and 12 Classics Trip to Greece

Last week, some of our students from Years 10 and 12 travelled to Greece, visiting sites such as Athens, Delphi, Olympia and Mycenae, on our Classics Trip. Visiting sites and seeing first-hand the archaeological finds and art covered in various GCSE courses, the trip was an enriching and enjoyable experience, as Year 12’s Alexander C and Year 10’s Freya explain in their reports. Thank you to everyone involved in making the trip such an enjoyable experience.

Year 12’s Alexander C

“The Monday after coming back from our trip I was struck down by torrents of questions, most of them asking “How was Greece?”. Were I not still suffering from the implications of our 1.00am return back home, I might have answered something within the region of, “When you nigh on whisper on the stage of the theatre at Epidaurus and are understood by those sitting on the highest seats fifty-six rows up; when you race down the ancient Olympic stadium to the same finish line which all the finest athletes of the Hellenic world would have trained years to cross first.

Or I might have said, “when you stand below the rock where the war-god Ares was put on trial and the apostle Paul first began to spread word of Christianity; when you focus your gaze to realise that there isn’t a single straight line in the entire Parthenon; when you stand at the Greeks’ centre of the universe below the towering flanks of sacred Parnassos in hallowed Delphi; when you march up to the same colossal gate Agamemnon would have marched up to on his return home to Mycenae from ten years marshalling the armies of Greece in Troy”.

I might also have said, “when you have experienced these things (steered by the supreme fount of all Hellenic wisdom that is Dr. Stern), your understanding of everything you’ve ever studied about ancient literature, history, indeed, people, shifts – they all become tangible, and you, in the future, feel the echoes of their present. Greece was great!”

Year 10’s Freya

“Last week a group of students from Year 10 and 12 went on a five day Classics trip to Greece. Spending every night in a new town or city, we visited one historical site after the other. From visiting Sounion and the Acropolis on the first and second days, through hiking up to the enigmatic Oracle of Delphi, to recreating a frieze next to the temple of Zeus in Olympia, and best of all listening to three Year 12s perform a section of ‘Medea’ from the top of the Epidaurus Theatre and being witness to the ingenious acoustics.

We packed every site, museum, tour and activity possible without any intervention of a goddess or two into the days, making the trip truly unforgettable!”