The Y6 house captains and Y5 school councillors were given the fantastic opportunity to visit London to experience our capital city, see some of the famous landmarks and to find out about Democracy and how this country is ran by visiting parliament. Unfortunately, due to the rail strikes we had to postpone the date of our initial trip which meant that we couldn’t visit the Houses of Parliament.

On the 11th January, we set off from Hull to Kings Cross which took us just under 3 hours. When we arrived we headed straight to the underground and caught the tube to Tower Bridge. When we got there we ate lunch in the sunshine overlooking the Tower of London which made a fantastic spot to have something to eat.

We went into the Tower of London which is a historic castle originally built William Conqueror where he built a stone tower fortress overlooking London. Over the years we found out that it has been used for a multitude of things – a prison, a place to torture criminals, a zoo, the Royal Armouries, The Royal Mint and a place to protect the crown jewels. We saw the empty case where the King Edward crown had been taken to prepare for King Charles’ coronation!

After spending a few hours in the Tower of London we made our way onto Tower Bridge and identified all of the landmarks along the River Thames. Then we went to see the Horse Guards and made our way to Downing Street. Here we spent a bit of time learning about who goes to Downing Street, who lives there and why. We were lucky enough to see Rishi Sunak, well his car, whizz by into Downing Street – there were lots of police vehicles with the cars!

We then walked up to the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben and found out about what happens in these buildings and how decisions in these buildings have an impact on us. The Palace of Westminster and Big Ben are synonymous with democracy and have become a symbol of parliament around the world – our school council elections are based on the voting systems that happen in this country when electing a political party representative.

After this we went up to Buckingham Palace and walked through St James’s park before heading back to Kings Cross and back home to Hull! A fantastic experience!