Stranded on a coach for 14 hours without food and only one bottle of water.
That was the nightmare situation a group of pupils from a South Tyneside school had to endure when they became caught up in travel chaos in Dover over the weekend, en route to their ski trip in Austria.
Coach passengers experienced huge delays to enter the Port of Dover be processed and board ferries, causing the port to declare a critical incident on Friday. And while it was announced that the backlog had been cleared by Monday morning, many were forced to miss part of their holiday or cancel altogether.
Among those impacted by the delays was a group from Jarrow School, who eventually arrived in Nassfeld for their trip shortly before midnight on Saturday after enduring around 43 hours on a coach. The of 40 pupils, aged between 12 and 15, and six members of staff were stuck in queues at the Port of Dover for 14 hours and eventually boarded a ferry 12 hours later than they were due to sail.
Stephen Marley, the educational visits coordinator at the school, said: "My main feeling was of concern and worry. I felt like it had become a safeguarding issue because we were left isolated for that long without any amenities.
"I was really worried about the kids. My main job in school is always 'are my students safe?' and it had been that prolonged that I didn't feel that they were.
"I was saying that to the policeman and the officers down at the checkpoint, but they just didn't do anything about it."
Mr Marley said the group were given one bottle of water each amid the delay and were unable to access food. He added: "All we were given in that time was one bottle of water each, that was it. The only amenity that was close was a Costa which shut down at two in the afternoon and never seemed to reopen after that.
"If the kids didn't have food on the coach, we were left with one bottle of water and no food, and no communication to tell us what was happening."
The group of pupils from Years 8, 9 and 10, set off on the coach from Jarrow at 2.30am on Friday and arrived at Dover at 10.15am, where they were due to board a ferry at 12.30pm. But the group didn't board until 12.30am on Saturday.
Mr Marley explained that the group passed through the English border checks, which took about 20 minutes. But when they were due to pass through French border control they were met with chaos.
He said: "We went over to one of the four lanes set up for coaches and we were immediately stuck in a long queue. I think we were about the 20th coach in the queue in our lane.
"Those four coach lanes all filtered into one and that was where the checkpoint was. Everyone was asked to get off the bus and there was three French passport control officers checking the passports and getting you back onto the bus. That was it. There was only three people doing that.
"We were trying to work out how quickly buses were going through this checkpoint and I think from our lane it was only one every 45 minutes. The other thing that was disappointing was there was no pattern to how the buses were going through. In lane one, two and three it was literally one bus every 45 minutes, but in lane four they seemed to be letting more through.
"A lot of the drivers started to see that and they were getting annoyed and things started to get heated so tempers were going at the barrier."
The pupils, who are due to travel back on Thursday, missed the first day of their trip due to the delays and had a "hectic" second day as the group had to fit in ski fittings before their skiing lessons. But Mr Marley has praised the pupils for the patience and resilience they have displayed throughout their experience.
He said: "The kids were amazing. They were so patient and resilient. We saw other coaches where the drivers were having to kick the kids off the coach because they were getting that restless and misbehaving and messing about. That then snowballed into them play fighting and chanting in the lanes.
"But our kids were fantastic, absolutely amazing, and even the bus drivers who don't know them said they can't believe how good they've been in the circumstances.
"Us staff didn't really reflect on it until the day after but we were so proud of them."
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