My name is Aisling Whelan, I am a Transition Year student in Coláiste An Átha, Kilmuckridge and on the 2nd of October I travelled to a town in the north-east of France called Bayeux. I went with six other students, three teachers and two Wexford County Council Representatives.
Firstly we saw the Bayeux Tapestry which is a famous tapestry that has around fifty scenes depicting the Norman invasion of England. Soon after that we were given a guided tour of Bayeux which provided us with a large historical background of the town, including its most interesting feature, The Cathedral.
The next day we visited the students of the Lycée Alain Chartier High school who had prepared presentations about French culture for us. They were very welcoming and gave us a tour of their school. We then ate lunch with them in their canteen. After that we visited the D-Day beaches. It was fascinating to see the massive craters left over from the explosions, the height of the cliffs that the Allied forces had to scale and the cramped bunkers that the Nazis had built. Finally we visited the American Cemetery which was a humbling and enlightening experience. That night we watched a screening of “Une Famille Syrienne” which was an intense film about the day-to-day lives of a Syrian family.
On our final day we visited the British Cemetery which also had graves of Turkish, Irish, Canadian and French soldiers, we viewed the memorial for people lost during the war and we viewed the exhibitions for the Bayeux-Calvados Award. Overall my trip to Bayeux was very eye-opening. It made me realise the amount of damage that war does on a daily basis. I hope that more is done in the future to stop war from happening permanently.
My Transition Year Experience