Residential Trip: strengthening the bond of friendship!

Last week, the King’s Hawford Year 5 children enjoyed a fantastic residential trip to the stunningly beautiful surroundings of the Peak District. The children spent the week at Dukes Barn, part of the stunning Chatsworth Estate, where they benefited from the challenges and fun of a wide variety of outdoor and adventurous activities. The trip was a fantastic opportunity for the children to get away together and strengthen the bonds of their friendships, whilst also becoming more independent.

An educational trust, Dukes Barn offered the pupils of King’s Hawford a safe yet adventurous environment where they we able to experience the great outdoors. Year 5 overcame their personal challenges and fears, enabling them to grow in confidence and self-esteem, which we have no doubt will equip them to meet the challenges in their day-to-day lives. Activities planned by the fully qualified and experienced staff at Dukes Barn ensured that each and every activity met specific objectives whilst challenging the ability of this lively cohort.

The staff were blown away by the outstanding levels of good behaviour, enthusiasm and resilience of every single child on the trip. All the children demonstrated bravery, courage, focus and determination whilst climbing, caving, weaselling, stream scrambling and even abseiling from a 70ft high bridge! The children also enjoyed a ‘relaxing’ paddle on the beautiful Chatsworth Estate lake…with rather a lot of splashing and laughter!

We returned having conquered this challenging residential trip on Friday evening with a coach full of very tired but very happy children, who had created memories that will stay with them for a very long time. A huge thank you must go to Mrs Redman for organising the trip and to all of the staff at Dukes Barn for making the activities so special and enjoyable.