Our day in the country

For primary school children, the outing before the summer holidays is a highlight of the year. Rosita Boland tags along on one trip

It's just after 7am at Heuston Station and it's school tour day for St Catherine's National School, Donore Avenue, Dublin. There are 49 excited children hopping up and down, daypacks bouncing on their backs.

Shepherded by teachers Julie Davison and Crea Ryder, they start boarding the 7.25am train to Athlone. Principal April Cronin is frantically running round the concourse, searching for the last two remaining pupils, who are brothers.

She phones their father, who tells her he left them at the ticket office as arranged. There are two ticket offices at Heuston these days. So Cronin is in a double-bind: she can't get on the train knowing two small boys are loose in Heuston, but if she doesn't find them soon, the train will be leaving without all three of them.

Her mobile rings. The boys are on the train: they found their way there themselves. Cronin just makes the train, and arrives into the reserved carriage out of breath. Taking her seat with patent relief, she says: "It's only once a year. . ."

St Catherine's is a small school, with only 89 pupils, so there is a mix of classes on this tour, from second up to sixth. Ages range from eight to 13, and the tour costs €35 for each child.

The first lunch boxes are opened before 8am, and there are numerous little delegations to the front of the carriage, where the teachers are sitting, to ask anxiously when the trolley might be appearing. Meanwhile, the bottles of fizzy drinks are opened and passed round. Someone loses a €2 coin and, for a time, there are several bottoms in the air as the (unsuccessful) hunt goes on.

Some children are playing snap and solitaire. Others are amusing themselves by photographing each other on their camera phones. Two small eight-year-old girls, Iseult Deane and Sinéad Halton, are playing chess on a tiny magnetic set, completely ignoring all the noise around them.

At 9am, two girls come up to incant the famous travelling mantra: "Are we nearly there?" As it happens, we are. The train arrives in Athlone some 25 minutes earlier than the teachers had expected, at 9.05am.

"We're too early," Cronin says. Too early for our bus, which was supposed to be here waiting for us. Worse, it's cold, windy, and misting hard, with a dreary grey sky - and watersports at Hodson Bay are first on the itinerary.

The children sit on the floor of the station and wait.

"I love school tours," says Lili Nolan. "No homework!"

Does anyone mind that it's raining? The children look at me pityingly, as if wondering am I not feeling very well.

"No, no, no," explains Cian Ó Néill patiently, "the rain makes it better."

It's a long wait for the bus - almost an hour, between us being early and then the bus being late. The teachers are annoyed, and mutter among themselves. We've been joined by two of the four leaders for the day, Paddy Hallahan and Edel Comer. They work for Super Fun School Tours, to which St Catherine's has been linked for the day. From early May to the end of June, Super Fun handles an average of three Co Westmeath-based school tours a day. The other team leaders for the day, Charlene Foley and Tristan Couper, are waiting at base at Hodson Bay.

Gone are the days when teachers had to supervise every aspect of the school-tour day. These four will take over now, supervising and guiding the children through the activities for the rest of the day.

When the bus finally arrives, there is a big cheer and the children exit through the doors of the station with the speed of a champagne cork popping from a bottle.

Hodson Bay is not far from Athlone; a big lake with shallow edges, which makes it ideal for children. It's still raining. The trio of teachers head into the Hodson Bay Hotel for tea and sandwiches, while the children head for the water, and organised mayhem. There are pedal boats and canoes, and a lot of the pedal boats are doing a version of bumper cars in the water. The children screech and splash and line up their boats for maximum bumping potential. They love it. They leave the water with the greatest of reluctance, as the next tour of the day is arriving for its rotated activity.

Next is what the children call "a treasure hunt" and what Hallahan and the others call "orienteering". They are divided into colour-coded teams and given a sheet of directions each. They have to find nine letters in nine different locations around the edge of the bay, which will provide an anagram they have to solve. I'm not clear which team wins: Morse Code, or East and West, as each declares with conviction that they alone have won the treasure. There's no treasure, but there's shared glory and "snack-time": an apple, banana, bag of Tayto and a Chomp bar.

Paddy Hallahan, a patient, straight- talking Dub with a sense of humour, is a huge hit with the children. They tell him he's "deadly", several times. When it's time for them to pick a leader to guide them through team games, they all roar Paddy's name.

After the games, and eating what remains of the lunch boxes, it's back on the bus and off to Athlone Castle. Getting off the bus, one of the children asks Hallahan the identity of the statue opposite us on the riverbank.

"John McCormack, a famous tenor from Athlone."

They look collectively blank.

"I'm a famous two-fifty meself," quips one of the group, Leanne Matthews.

The castle element of the tour consists of looking around the small museum, and watching a short slide presentation about the history of the castle. The language of the presentation is difficult - "reinforced by bastions, dragoons, grenadiers, Williamites" - and I wonder how much of it the children understand. They sit through it politely in textbook silence, but they come out rolling their eyes.

"That was then, and this is now," Hannah Cunningham says, explaining why she is not interested in the past of "then".

"I wanted to be more involved," Sinead Murphy says. Nobody is impressed by the old-fashioned slide presentation: these technology-literate children have grown up with computer-generated movies and have video cameras on their phones.

I look at the visitors' book on the way out. Ella Scally from our group has written: "A little boring." Underneath, perhaps emboldened by the previous entry, Ashley Dicker has stated: "Extremely boring."

The day's almost over. Despite protests from the children about wanting to visit a rival fast-food operation, it's off to Supermacs as prearranged. The high point is when the children discover that the metal disc at the bottom of their stools makes a fantastically loud dustbin-lid type sound when kicked.

"Every tour does this at some point," Comer confides.

It's back on the bus, and off to the station. We're on the train back to Dublin, but for at least one child the tour isn't completely over yet.

"This is the best, best bit of the tour," Andrew Doherty says happily, looking out the window. "Being on the train."

The tour: putting the fun into education

The primary school tour may be a flexible date but it's a fixed part of the school calendar. The school tour is supposed to be an annual day out that mixes education and fun. The traditional tours focused more on education than fun, with little or no time built in for activities.

Activities are now a key part of the school tour - as is shopping. Many tours have shopping time in shopping centres built into them.

Tours popular with primary school children include farm and zoo visits.

At Glendeer Pet Farm, in Athlone, Co Westmeath, pupils see pet animals, including Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs, ponies, donkeys, deer, peacocks, Jersey cows and goats. Millbridge Farm, in Convoy, Co Donegal, has Friesian cows, Clydesdale horses, and various breeds of sheep, pigs and goats.

At Delphi Adventure Centre in Co Mayo children try a range of activities, such as abseiling, raft-building, rock-climbing and a rope assault course.

In Dunmore East Adventure Centre, Co Waterford, pupils take part in water sports such as powerboating and kayaking, and land sports such as archery and rock-climbing.

See www.schooltours.ie

Code of Conduct

A weekly series on etiquette for modern living

5. Barbecues

1 Don't help the cook unless asked: in an increasingly feminised world, being barbecue king is one of the few roles a man has left.

2 The men must stand around and discuss the beauty of the barbecue for at least 15 minutes: it's a man thing.

3 The men must spend a further 15 minutes commenting on the glory of the fire: it's a prehistoric thing.

4 Vegetarians must opt out or shut up: screwing up your face in disgust every time a steak is served will not be popular.

5 Barbecue sausages must be outrageously big: at least the length of the grill.

6 In the butcher's, if you see meat marinating in a gloopy red liquid, buy it: something that unnatural just has to be tasty.

7 The smell of a barbecue triggers some deep hunger in a person: make sure it wafts across the entire neighbourhood.

8 Don't spend too long on garnish: nobody is salivating over the salad.

9 Don't get carried away: a whole pig roasting on a spit is overdoing things.

10 Don't forget the novelty apron: it's as traditional as food poisoning.

- Shane Hegarty