Written by Barry Purchese.  Tx 13th February 1987

Again, you have to wonder exactly what Ant’s getting out of this trip. He has to spend his nights hiding on the boy’s barge (clearly breaching the girl’s one would have been a step too far) so he’s not close to Georgina.  And since she tends to spend her days with the others (and there’s usually a teacher or two around as well) there seems to be few opportunities from them to grab any time together.

At the start of this one he’s somewhat dismayed to find that he can’t sneak away first thing in the morning as the barge has floated away from its mooring.  So he has to hide in one of the toilets, which comes as a surprise to the others ….

Meanwhile, how are our intrepid foursome of Gonch, Trevor, Ziggy and Robbie faring? They made it to the tent and stuck it out through the night, although neither Gonch or Robbie slept at all (they were too frightened by the sounds they could hear outside).  Trevor and Ziggy clearly had less imagination as they slept soundly, but now the time has come to confront their fears.  And they turn out to be … sheep.

I guess you can say that these episodes are somewhat low on the excitement scale.  Also, it’s slightly unbelievable that Mr Scott, who’s been keeping an eye on them, had a tent pitched up very close by.  It might have been dark when they reached their tent the previous evening, but surely they would have spotted that they weren’t alone?  Mr Scott continues to be a transformed man – far removed from the pushover he was at school.  Does this mark the start of a new chapter, or will he regress once he’s back in the corridors of Grange Hill?

The boys are irked that the girls are getting friendly will some local boys.  This inevitably leads to several battles – one of which involves Ziggy stuck up a tree and Freddie yet again bemoaning the fact that his clothes have been ruined.

Mr Scott remains the life and soul of the party.  He digs out a guitar and leads everybody into a somewhat tuneless version of Yellow Submarine.  But while this cacophony is occurring, somehow Freddie is having a doze on his bunk.  But, oh no, the gas has been left on.  Will somebody discover him in time or will he die horribly?  I wonder.  Possibly more interesting is that the others decide to run through the Beatles songbook – next on their torture list is Help although they then decide that Buddy Holly (Oh Boy) deserves their attention as well.

Meanwhile, the relationship between Banksie and Laura seems to have developed off-screen.  Her mother is far from happy that she’s tarted herself up – presumably for his benefit.  As we’ll discover during the remainder of series ten, Mrs Reagan is not a great admirer of Steven Banks.

Mr Scott’s impressive aura already seems to be dissipating.  He tells the others that there’s a hot disco in town – which turns out to be a hop held in the church hall.  “Once a wally, always a wally” mutters Trevor sagely.