Hothershall Lodge 2024

Hothershall Lodge

On Thursday 14th March and Friday 15th March, our Year 4 children embarked on a fabulous adventure, spending the night at Hothershall Lodge Outward Bound Center. For some of the children was the first night they have spent away from family and a valuable opportunity to push themselves and face new challenges.

Whilst we obviously wanted the children to have fun and make lasting memories together, but we also wanted them to learn while we are at Hothershall Lodge. We have give the instructors a list of things we wanted them to target during our visit, which were:

To become more independent, taking responsibility for our own organisation and actions.
To develop a sense of resilience – keeping going even when things may seem tough or too hard
To take ‘safe’ risks when we might not know what will happen
To step outside of our comfort zones and challenge ourselves to do new or harder things.

Check out the updates and the photos below to see how the Year 4 children got on.

Thursday 14th March

After the short drive to Hothersall Lodge by coach, a very excited Year 4 class disembarked to meet their instructors and have a guided tour of the complex. Once the children found their bedroom partners, it was the first taste of independence in the form of fitting bedsheets and the children making their beds. With an hour of free time before lunch, we played manhunt, explored the woods and climbed some trees, which the children loved. Following our picnic lunch, the children were split into 3 activity groups, with two groups canoeing for the afternoon and one group climbing, caving and zip-lining.

The canoers learned the basics of paddling before learning on the water as a team, with twenty children split between 4 rafted canoes. Lots of races, games like Mexican Wave and Head-dunking followed, with all groups visibly making lots of progress with their ability to paddle and steer the canoes. As the children had recently done water safety in swimming, the instructors wanted to teach the children about the practical reasons of why this is so important, due to cold-water shock. The children willingly jumped off the jetty into the icy cold water, showing lots of bravery and then composure to do a starfish float while they controlled their breathing. After 20 seconds to acclimatise, the children calmly swam to the shore with a much more composed breathing ability. It was excellent to see the learning the children had done in swimming put to good use in a real-life situation. The climbers all traversed and also vertically climbed the indoor climbing wall, learning how to abseil correctly along the way. They all had two goes on the very popular zip-line which spanned the distance of the center, then had 15 minutes caving in the indoor caving system which is on 3 levels!

After a filling tea of curry, the children got wrapped up and we went out into the dark armed with our torches. We played lots of games of hide and seek and had a camp fire toasting marshmellows. A quick change into our PJ’s for a hot chocolate and story before bed closed out our first day, ahead of a very chatting night’s ‘sleep’!

Friday 15th March

After a very average night’s sleep, the children rose with a lot of energy so we spent an hour in the Pavilion games room. The children played table football, table tennis and board games before returning to rooms to pack, organise and strip beds before breakfast. This was a very, very busy 20 minutes, but we survived in time for an 8am breakfast!

Once we had a short briefing with our instructors, the children were swapped over to do either canoeing or climbing and zip-lining. The children once again had an amazing time, really challenging themselves and making the most of the opportunity to step outside their comfort zones. All of the instructors gave huge praise to the children’s ability and attitude towards the activities, but also their general manners and behaviour, which was exemplary.

After a picnic-style lunch, the children gathered their cases, thanked the instructors and boarded the coach for their return journey to school. There were a LOT of tired children, but every single child said they had loved their time at Hothersall Lodge, they were really proud of themselves for pushing themselves and all agreed they had learnt a lot about themselves during the visit.