High quality outdoor education experiences delivering the best outcomes
By utilising our excellent site, fantastic location and experienced staff we aim to get the most from any residential here. Designing a programme starts with the visit leader letting us know what they hope to achieve during their stay – their outcomes – which become central to the planning of and the residential itself.
Outdoor education experiences can be tailored to many different outcomes including:
- Promoting health and wellbeing
- Enabling students to enjoy and achieve in school – and hopefully later life
- Boosting self-esteem
- Experiencing new things
- Fostering independence
- Experiencing challenge
- Experiencing outdoor and adventurous activities (as per the curriculum)
- Developing team working skills
Our instructors are experienced in not only providing fun experiences, but also in adapting and tailoring them to match the group’s needs, the aims of the visit and variables such as the weather. To ensure the high quality of what we provide we work with groups of up to 12 young people and generally run activities over sessions of 3 hours to get the most from them.
Flexible programming
There is no set programme, we encourage and support visiting staff to take an active role organising and running activities during their visit. Whilst we can deliver all activities during a visit more commonly visiting staff will lead certain activities. We believe that by delivering activities the visiting staff become central to the young people’s experiences and therefore build upon these more strongly back at school.
Our residentials are commonly over 3 or 5 days, although both longer and shorter visits are possible. Our central location means that most groups can be at the centre and be doing activities by 11am on their first day and are busy doing activities until lunchtime (or later) on their last day – maximising what they get from their visit. Why wait until you arrive before activities begin – we’ll support groups who choose to use public transport to get here. Getting a train to Grindleford, having your luggage collected and then walking to the centre can be a great way to start your residential on a high.
Transparent and simple pricing
Planning a residential can be complicated so we have a simplified pricing system called ‘bundles’ which are suitable for the vast majority of our groups. ‘Bundles’ aren’t fixed programmes and can incorporate a lot of flexibility. They do however enable groups to plan a visit within a certain budget and give parents / carers plenty of notice to save for their children’s visit.
For up to date prices for your visit please see the downloads below:
- Sheffield Schools Prices September 2017 – July 2018 (PDF, 0.5mb)
- Other Schools Prices September 2017 – July 2018 (PDF, 0.5mb)
We have an off peak 10% discount period from 27 November 2017 to 16 February 2018. Find out more about the benefits to schools of running a residential in the winter months.
If your programme plans don’t fit within a bundle please contact us to discuss the additional options available.
Sample programmes
It’s nearly impossible to show all the different programme options available for each bundle so we’re not going to – the different options can be discussed with your visit programme co-ordinator in the lead up to your visit. We do however think that some examples of what’s possible are useful for those planning a visit – therefore please have a look at the downloads below:
- Three Day Residential Visit Sample programmes (PDF, 0.1mb)
- Five Day Residential Visit Sample programmes (PDF, 0.1mb)
- John Muir Award 5 day programme (PDF, 0.1mb)
