Things you’ll know if you went to school in Yorkshire

There are some things only a proper Yorkshire lass or lad will understand about going to school there.

If you went to school in God’s Own County then count yourself lucky. Yes, your secondary school comp was probably a crumbly mess, but you loved it, it made you who you are today and gave you the northern grit you need to get by in life.

People might take the mick, they might ask if you had outside toilets and if ferret racing really was a part of your sports day. They can laugh all they want, but they’ll never understand how truly great it was to be educated in Yorkshire.

It wasn’t year eight without a residential week to Bewerley Park 

Everyone couldn’t wait to get to ‘big school’ and hit up Bewerley Park like a boss. Abseiling, cave exploring, swimming in a gorge, completed it mate.

  Photo by Allison Lowndes  

You spent most of the Duke of Edinburgh Award in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales

Miss Clarke said it would be ‘fun’ but you didn’t realise ‘fun’ meant trekking through the Yorkshire Dales in the pouring rain, with no phone signal, and a map from the 1990s.

When you went on a school trip abroad (or just outside of Yorkshire) you told people you went to a school ‘near Leeds’

‘Where do you go to school?’

‘Skipton’

‘Never heard of it’

‘It’s near Leeds’

You also chanted ‘white rose’  to make sure everyone knew where you were from

You’re proud to be from Yorkshire and nothing will stop you letting everyone know.

Calling chewing gum ‘chuddy’ and being a pro at passing it to your mate under the table 

Just don’t get caught or you’ll end up in detention scrapping ‘chuddy’ off the floor.

You could identify the posh kids by the fact they pronounced their T’s

The letter T is a rarity in Yorkshire, making it the perfect gauge for how ‘posh’ the new kid was. The more they used it the posher they were.

Always having a genuine but very weird reason for being late to school

Stuck behind a tractor, cows on the railway line, the school bus got stranded in flash floods. The list goes on and on.

The P.E changing rooms flooding every time it rained

‘Just walk around the puddle it’s only water’ seemed to be your school motto. It’s always raining in Yorkshire and for some reason this inevitably meant a part of your school flooding.  You never understood why they didn’t fix the roof during the whole five years you were there.

Your school house names were named after different parts of the Yorkshire Dales

There’s nothing quite like Yorkshire pride, that’s why your school house names were probably ‘Swaledale, Nidderdale, Airedale, and Wharfedale’.

You were given a day off to attend the Great Yorkshire Show

It wasn’t a school trip but an actual, and officially scheduled, day off school. It was essentially a Yorkshire Bank Holiday.

Going on  holiday to Scarborough or Whitby was the highlight of your summer 

Forget the French Riviera, it was all about Scarborough and Whitby when you were growing up.

It’s not lunch time, it’s dinner time

What is this ‘lunch time’ southerners talk about? It’s breakfast, dinner, and tea.

Jamie Oliver ruining school dinners, which meant you couldn’t have chips and gravy anymore

First he came for the turkey twizzlers and then he came for the chips and gravy.

Getting to sixth form and being allowed out to town at dinner, which always meant going to Greggs 

‘Take that Jamie Oliver, I’m having a chuffing steak bake and you can’t stop me.’

Going to school with all your parents friends children

It’s a well known fact that nobody ever leaves Yorkshire, which means schools are just a continuous circle of the same families.

Then being taught by the same teachers that taught your parents

Likewise, the teachers that taught your parents (and perhaps even your grandparents) will probably also teach you.

Having the best school trips ever

Science took you to Eureka, Geography to Brimham Rocks and Malham Cove, History to the Jorvik Viking Centre, and for some reason I.T always took you to Lightwater Valley.

Taking a tractor to the end of year prom rather than a limo 

You’ve been driving a tractor on the farm since you were 13 so why not show off your skills and drive yourself to your prom?