Winning Wallace High team conquers the World Wise quiz

The team of Year 12 pupils - Alice Crosby, Peter Scott and Ryan Simpson - brought home the trophy, which they won alongside Glasgow’s Woodfarm High School, at the annual WW Challenge weekend in Malham, Yorkshire.

The theme of the weekend - ‘What makes Malham special?’ - entailed a lot of geography and sharing fieldwork experience with schools from around the United Kingdom.

Each school had to create a presentation and deliver it twice on the theme in front of people from the Geographical Association and the Field Studies Council.

The Wallace pupils and accompanying teacher, Head of Geography, Miss Barbara McKee, got to know the other teams, which included students from schools all over Britain, who had all gathered in the name of one common theme, namely geography.

On Saturday morning, after a briefing, the team set out to see the best of what the Dales had to offer and experienced what they later described as the tranquility of Janet’s Foss, the dramatic spectacle of Gordale Scar and the immense scale of the Malham Cove.

In interpreting the question ‘What makes Malham special?’, the Wallace team decided to base its presentation on how the “seemingly magical Malham” compared to the Land of Westeros, the fantastical setting of the hugely successful Game of Thrones, which is filmed in Northern Ireland.

The judges were said to have been surprised and impressed by the originality of the idea, enough certainly to make Wallace joint winners with Woodfarm.

The team members hailed the challenge “an incredible experience” which none of them were likely to forget.

Ryan Simpson said: “I believe I speak for all of us when I say the scenery took us aback.

“ It was a pleasure to be surrounded by people who, like me, appreciate the fact that geography is all around.”

Alice Crosby added: “It was truly an amazing and rewarding experience”.

Peter Scott summed up by saying: “The trip has given us a new perspective of geography, and the experience has greatly helped our understanding of the natural landscape.”

There will now be an opportunity for the team to enter the National Geographic quiz.