by Angela Cole

acole@thekmgroup.co.uk

While their counterparts were shivering at home in the snow last week, schoolchildren from Maidstone were braving blizzard conditions while on a school trip.

Almost 60 pupils and teachers from St Simon Stock RC School in Oakwood Park, Maidtsone, were stranded in France when temperatures of -10 hit and thick snow came down.
The 59 Year 10 students and six staff were on a trip to northern France when the weather struck.
They had left Paris at 10am last Tuesday but at 7pm that day, when they should have arrived back in the UK, they found themselves marooned 120 miles south of Calais as police shut the motorway due to a blizzard.
Luckily, they had ended up close to a service station, so were able to use the toilets and shops, but many other drivers had to remain in their cars.
At 1pm the folowing afternoon the police and Army cleared the roads and reopened the motorway. The group arrived back 34 hours after they had set out.
A spokesman said: “Although tired, the students viewed it as quite an adventure. The staff on the trip were praised for their professionalism and care for the students.”