Activities:

School Trips/Tours

For a long number of years, PBC has fostered and encouraged students to participate educational tour programmes at Christmas, Midterm and Easter. Participation is important in peer group bonding, integration and personal development. Tours have gone to a broad and diverse range of places including France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, New York, Moscow, Canada and South Africa. It is envisaged that the college will continue visiting foreign countries in the hope to broaden our students’ horizons.

Pres Staff Group Visit World War 1 Battlefields

Last weekend (Sept. 23-25, 2011.) saw eight past and present staff members undertake a historical trip to Flanders in Belgium to see first-hand several important sites that proved pivotal to the outcome of World War 1.
Blessed with beautiful, warm, sunny weather, the group first visited Messines Ridge, location of the huge round tower memorial to the Irish fallen of WW1, and unveiled by President Mary McAleese in 1998. Everyone present would agree that it was quite an emotional experience, trying to get your head around the vast numbers of Irish and other nationalities who perished in that place.

A short trip to the nearby historic town of Ypres followed, scene of three of the bloodiest encounters in the First World War. Highlights of this visit were the very impressive, ‘On Flanders Fields’ museum, located in the town’s famous Linen Hall; viewing the memorial to Munster casualties of the conflict, paid for by the people of Cork in the early 1920’s and located outside St. Martin’s Cathedral; and finally, a visit to the striking Menin Gate, a huge memorial built by the British government as a tribute to their fallen soldiers in 1924.

The final leg of a very packed programme was a journey to Passchendaele, a little town synonymous with a very bloody battle fought near there from July to October, 1917.

Here, at Tyne Cot Cemetery, the group saw the graves of over 60,000 Allied servicemen of all nationalities, with lots of interesting stories about participants in the nearby battle to be found in the excellent interpretive centre, located next to the cemetery itself. The sheer size of the carnage here really had to be seen to be believed, and the words written on several floral tributes in the cemetery seemed very appropriate, ‘Lest we forget’.
All in all, a very worthwhile and educational experience was had by all and this is an exercise which, one hopes, can be repeated at other sites of historical relevance at various points in the near future.

Tour Group: Mr. Caleb Sheehan, Ms. Sharon Gillane, Mr. Fergus Healy, Mr. Don Buckley, Ms. Deirdre O’Keeffe, former Principal Michael Hennessy, and former teachers of History at Pres, Mr. Mick Dunphy and Mr. Des Keane.