Deanfield Outdoor Centre School Trip

Students will try various fire starting techniques before cooking dough twist dampers on an open fire. There is also the opportunity to cook popcorn bushcraft style. Often bushcraft is combined with Archery and or Axe Throwing to make a full half day session. Usually Shelter Building is combined with Orienteering in another part of the Forest.

Over the years we have evolved from being a field studies centre into a general outdoor learning centre. We do still however offer field work - principally river studies at KS2-4 if requested. This is often combined with more general outdoor learning activities.

Our experienced and qualified Instructors can lead a variety of adventurous activities including Canoeing, Zip Wire, Climbing Tower, Leap of Faith, Crate stacking, Jacob's Ladder, Bushcraft, Archery, Axe Throwing, Mountain Biking and Orienteering etc. There are also several activities that visiting staff can facilitate themselves including our Team Problem Solving Challenges, Tunnels System, Stream Study, Low Ropes Course, Orienteering & Shelter Building etc.

You've come to the Forest of Dean so we encourage you to get into it and experience it up close. You may well see deer, wild boar and buzzards all on one forest walk. The stream that runs through our grounds hosts an abundance of wildlife and our stream study session allows students to view invertebrates under a microscope and learn more about what lives in a stream and what it tells us about water quality.

We have an experienced Field Studies Teacher who can deliver river studies at GCSE & 'A' Level. The nearby towns of Lydney or Coleford allow for town studies and contrasting localities with those near school.

This is one of our main strengths as an Outdoor Learning Centre and one of our key 'touchstones'. We see teamwork and team building as central to the ethos of what we deliver and it comes into many of the outdoor activities we offer whether it is out on the lake canoeing in open canoes or on the climbing tower and peer group belaying. Our 18 team problem solving challenges are obviously dedicated to teamwork and have a score sheet that reviews team skills.

PSHE is not taught as a specific subject instead we embed aspects of this into all of our work. Our welcome briefing to groups will frontload and highlight the positive reasons why they are here on a course and what they can get out of it. We seek to develop their confidence and acceptance of challenge in new and unfamiliar situations to help build resilience and character. Teamwork is a central theme running through most of the activities and the residential experience itself obviously has many benefits associated with living as a community of people together.

We can provide kayaking if specifically requested but our preferred area of expertise is running open canoeing sessions. On these we focus on teamwork and often raft canoes together to have a team that need to cooperate and work together to steer and possibly race their boats. Just unloading or loading boats is another great way to start or finish the session with the whole team working together. It's not about turning them into canoeists it's about having a fun and rewarding session where they try new things and work together. We have a beautiful lake to canoe on that is less than ten minutes from the Centre and if finishing the session with a fun wet finish (in warmer months of the year) we will usually just jump them in the bus to get back to shower and change at the Centre rather than wasting time changing at the lake. This maximises activity time on and possibly in the lake.

We can also run corracle building and relay races. This is a modern take on the old raft building idea where small teams build a corracle from waterpipe, plastic sheeting and cable ties and then attempt to paddle it out to and around a buoy in a relay race with other teams. A great team activity that also makes fantastic spectator sport!