As the traffic lights turned red outside the local national school, the sun came out and the memories flooded in as the distant chatter of excited children, waiting impatiently to head off on their school tour, drifted in my direction.

I lowered my window as a wave of nostalgia washed over me and, with my engine idling, I watched the little people through the rear-view mirror.

Wearing backpacks nearly as big as themselves, and smiles to match, they stood in chaotic lines inside the school gate. Nearly levitating with excitement, they hopped from foot to foot in anticipation as they waited for the bus doors to slowly wheeze open and let them in.

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Some had already slipped small hands into their schoolbags, bags similar to those I had once packed for my own children, containing a change of clothing ‘just in case’ and a lunchbox full of treats forbidden during term time. Crisps and fizzy drinks, bars of chocolate hidden away for the journey home, destined to become a molten mess of sweetness in the heat of the bus. School tours had their own rules – and what goes on tour stays on tour.

To many of them, the journey on the bus would be just as exciting as their destination, and I laughed as I watched them jump up and down, calling “me Miss” in their wish to be picked for the back row. Soon they would be settled into the unfamiliar upholstered seats with their best friend strapped in beside them, ready for the sing-song and the trading of packets of Tayto and jellies, coats discarded in excitement and windows beginning to steam up with the heat and chatter of small children. Meanwhile, the teachers counted heads for the first of many times that day and attempted to drown out the chorus of “are we there yet?” and “is it lunchtime, Miss?” with enthusiastic renditions of The Wheels on the Bus and Baby Shark.

I wondered where they were heading.

Wearing backpacks nearly as big as themselves, and smiles to match, they stood in chaotic lines inside the school gate. Nearly levitating with excitement, they hopped from foot to foot in anticipation as they waited for the bus doors to slowly wheeze open and let them in

Maybe a petting zoo with its stern-looking llamas, or an interactive museum. Perhaps an activity centre with slides sending them screaming with delight, or a sky walk through a dense forest, their small faces filled with brave determination as they stepped from wooden plinths high in the trees onto zip wires. Everything is possible when you have your friends behind you.

The teachers deserved medals too, armed with clipboards, spare tissues and endless patience, fully aware they’d return home later that evening hoarse from counting children and repeating “walk, don’t run”, before falling into bed that night exhausted but content, knowing they had helped create memories those children would carry for years to come.

I searched my memory, recalling a school tour to Sherwood Forest to visit a tree. Granted, it was the Ancient Oak of Robin Hood fame, but it was still a day out to visit a tree surrounded by a fence that we could look at but not touch! Different times, that’s for sure. Yet I can still remember the excitement of it all, the packed lunch, the freedom of the day with no spelling tests or homework in sight.

In more recent years I remember waving my own two small children off on their school tours. Chatting to the mothers and fathers beside me, exchanging casual goodbyes, none of us knowing that those precious days would fly by so fast. I can’t remember where they were going and I wonder if they do either, but it doesn’t really matter. School tours were never about the destination.

They were about friendship, freedom and the feeling that adventure was waiting just beyond the school gates, if only for one glorious day away from copybooks and classrooms.

The traffic lights changed and I drove off, the excited voices of the children becoming fainter and fainter as I left them behind me, thinking of my visit to that mighty oak and how wonderful it is now to see these little acorns grow.