Hurst students benefit from watching Eyjafjöll erupt without experiencing any fall-out ...

Remove Geography students' March trip to Iceland

Few would be happy to hear that their journey's destination was experiencing a volcanic eruption – but Hurst's Head of Geography, Robert Ashley, and his student party actually became rather excited.

With twenty seven Year 10 geography students, he travelled to Iceland in late March for a four-day trip to visit the country’s volcanic landscape. The trip suddenly became even more educationally significant when, four days before they left England, the volcano Eyjafjöll erupted for the first time in nearly 200 years.

Mr Ashley took professional advice and was informed that the trip would be entirely safe and thus the students were fortunate to be close enough to see the continuing eruption on the second day of their visit. 'Experiencing a real eruption at first-hand will, I know, remain in the students’ minds for a long time to come" said Mr Ashley "and will certainly help them greatly if the topic comes up in their exams".

There were many other highlights on this short trip including a swim in the famous geothermal Blue Lagoon

visiting a number of spectacular waterfalls

a walk on a glacier

witnessing an active geyser and boiling hot springs

walking along the Almannagja fault that is the diverging boundary between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates.

And the final big bonus was, of course, that the party arrived home safe and well, nearly two weeks before the ash thrown up into the atmosphere by Eyjafjöll's eruption closed down every British airport...