Switching one Broadway for another on a Business Studies school trip, the 34 Haslingden High School students got off to a bumpy start when, instead of New York, they found themselves looking round a prehistoric mound at Newgrange outside of Dublin, after their flight was delayed 24 hours.

Teaching assistant Lee Trickett said: “That meant we were not in America for the first day when we had lined up a meeting with an advertising and a financial executive.”

However, on landing in the Big Apple they wasted no time and visited the 911 Memorial and museum, watched Chicago on Broadway and took in the New York skyline from the top of the Rockefeller Centre.

They viewed the Statue of Liberty from Liberty Island and hopped on the subway to Times Square where they dined at Buba Gump’s Shrimp Company.

A highlight for the students, who are football fans, was meeting Sunderland’s David Moyes and Jermaine Defoe who were in New York training with the team.

Nuala Kearney, 14, said: “I would love to live in New York. The whole trip was amazing and from our room we could see right across the city.

“I had seen photographs of New York before and I could not believe that it really does look just like the pictures you see.”

The students also had workshops in film lighting.

Mollie Proctor, 14, said: “We learnt how they use three point lighting to make people look their best in films.”

They rounded off an exhausting whistle-stop five-day excursion with a visit to Radio City Music Hall where they met a Rockette dancer.

Mr Trickett, who is completing four triathlons this year, didn’t let his training slip either.

He ran every day at 5am, completed a half marathon, ran in Central Park and north to south and east to west across Manhattan Island.