We have had a fabulous French experience thanks to our Turing Scheme Normandy residential. None of this would have been possible without the help and support of lots of people.

A big thank you to the administrators in each of the eleven schools, as well as the principals and class teachers. Without their help we would not have been able to organise the passports, medical information and dietary information.

School staff have also been instrumental in supporting us with creating the risk assessments, so thank you to the Educational Visits Coordinators and Principals for their hard work on this very important task.

We have also been supported with the Turing Scheme planning by Susanne Kiff and a number of other central DMAT staff. Cheryl and Kyran in Finance have been very supportive and thorough with their monitoring of the budget. Kyran has even joined us in France to keep track of the spending!

Thanks also go to Mark Butler in our Digital Team for his support, along with Kai and Joe who have sorted our tech for France. They created the blog and sourced the emergency phones.  Joe Duffy joined us in France and has been busy uploading our blogs so that parents were able to keep track of our adventures.

Our bus drivers in France have been brilliant. Rachel and Chokri, Stuart and Richard, Adam and Ben. They have helped us lug bags, sports equipment, water bottles, and picnics back and forth to the coaches and provided us with very smooth journeys.

We have also been helped by so many French people. Karine and her colleagues at the school in Creully were so kind to all our pupils and had made so much effort with baking French delicacies and providing a variety of activities.

We were also helped by Christophe the police officer from Creully who provided an escort for our three coaches through the village and ensured the pupils could disembark safely. We all enjoyed having a police escort!

It was fantastic to be joined by two members of Okehampton  College staff so that the children who are transitioning to Year 7 could get to know them. Mr Parker and Mrs Grigg have thrown themselves into the trip. Well done to our Year 7 ambassadors who have been supporting all our children and staff.

Finally a big big thank you to our group leaders who have supported every child through this week. They have looked after poorly children, given countless reminders about water bottles, sun cream and ensured everyone was in the right place at the right time. They have administered medicine and TLC to the children and each other! They have missed quite a lot of sleep and spent time away from their own families, and done all of this with a smile on their face. So another big thank you to Mrs Huxen, Mrs Medland, Mrs Hardwick, Mrs Willis, Mr Hicks, Miss Radbourne, Mrs Whitelaw, Mr Simber, Mrs Cousins, Mr Pearson, Mrs Delgheru, Mrs Dunn, Mrs Watts, Mrs Budworth, Mr Wilkins, Mrs Reid, Mrs Lee, Miss Spooncer, Mrs Bunning, Miss Carpenter, Mrs Baldwin and Miss Young!

What a dream team!