Crompton House School Trip to London for the Roots & Shoots Awards

by Zoe Hodges, age 13.We all had a great time from start to end. We met up on Shaw Station where we caught a train at half past six in the morning, which was a tiny bit early for me. That then took us to Victoria Station where we caught a taxi to Manchester Piccadilly, then an early train on to London Euston. This took around three hours to get there but we busied our selves talking and discussing the day ahead of us.When we got there we had to catch the Underground train, which was horrible. The sound, the smell, the noise, it was one of those "never again" experiences. When we got to the other end we then had the difficult task of finding the Laurence Olivier National Theatre where the Roots & Shoots Awards was being held. Once at the Theatre we began setting up our display of all the things we have done in Roots & Shoots this year but with no pins it was kind of hard. Once our board and table were set up we had a run through of events and then went back to explain to Dr. Jane Goodall all that we have done (and she seemed very impressed).After dinner we all sat together and each school did a presentation on their Roots & Shoots Projects. Dr. Jane did a very interesting speech about what we can achieve and what Roots & Shoots means to her. She told us about her life and what her dreams were and how she achieved them. Each school got awarded with a book by Jane, a hand carved elephant and a "Mini Mr H" which is named after Jane Goodall's monkey that was given to her by a magician that was blind; apparently you wouldn’t know he was blind because of how good he actually was. Now Mr H goes everywhere with her. We then had our photograph taken with Dr Jane and we got her autograph.We then went back to the Underground where we caught a train to Camden Town and made our way round to the Zoo. We weren’t sure we were going the right way so Miss Mclean asked two men. This might have been a problem since they didn’t speak English however, they did know the way to Regents Park, which was quite near the Zoo. The Zoo was great and we saw lots of animals in the short space of time we had. My favourite was the Sumatran Tiger as I have recently adopted one, only this one I think had had a really long and tiring day, as it was fast asleep. I think Sarah's favourite were the monkeys - they were totally the opposite of the tiger as they were swinging around chasing squirrels.Once the Zoo was shut it was time to make our way to the station, but because we were early we set out to catch the train before our scheduled one. When we got to the station some of us were hungry and so decided not to get on the earlier train but to eat instead. We heard our train being called and made our way to what we thought was the right platform. There was a train in - not ours but the one after. If you could only have seen us all legging it up that platform after our train(!) We of course missed it and had to wait for the next one to board. The train journey home was full of laughter and we really enjoyed our selves as you can tell.