Selkirk High School pupils fundraised throughout the previous term to allow them to attend Birmingham Clothes Show, writes Becky Blair.
This was achieved in many different ways – from running a charity shop to bake sales.
Everyone in the class reached their goal and on a wild and windy morning we met at Selkirk Market Place at 7.15am to catch the bus to Carlisle railway station.
However, on arrival, we discovered many of the trains had been cancelled due to the bad weather, so we had to rethink how we could get to Birmingham. A train coming into the station was heading south, so we all got on and began our journey.
We reached our destination three hours late after changing trains.
Kaiyu’s map-reading skills led us in the wrong direction as we looked for our accommodation! But after finding the Ibis Hotel it looked really fancy inside.
We were allocated our rooms and had an hour to freshen up. The Bull Ring was a short walk from the hotel and we walked there to get our evening meal. Four of us went to Pizza Hut and the other four chose a Thai restaurant, while the teachers went next door to Waga Mamas.
There was a chance to have a quick look around the shops before we returned to the hotel for a good night’s sleep.
Following breakfast we took the train to the NEC for the clothes show. On arrival we had to put our luggage into locker rooms and then got to look at the stalls before the fashion show got under way.
There was a lot of amazing things for sale – such as clothes, jewellery, beauty items etc., and there were two different halls for us to look in. Colleges and universities also had stalls advertising their courses.
After shopping we met up with the rest of the group and collected our tickets for the show which was opened by girl band Stooshe. It included fashion models and dancers, and was a great spectacle and everybody really enjoyed it. The compere was fashion designer Henry Holland and Tom Evans was also modelling.
Throughout the day many of us saw some famous people, including Amy Childs, Kirk Norcross, Carol Wright and Nanny Pat – and we were able to have our photograph taken with some of them.
Following the show we had time for more shopping before meeting up to get the train home.
We were all really tired at the end of the day and arrived back in Selkirk at 11pm after a brilliant trip.