New Visiting Staff Dining Table

As those who have stayed with us will know, Denise, Karen and Jane, our wonderful cooks pictured above, always go that extra mile to look after you. We were finding that with the large portions of roast dinner they serve up that on the visiting staff dining table there wasn't a lot of room for it all when we had lots of visiting staff. We've therefore bought a nice new wooden dining table for visiting staff which is a little wider than the standard student variety and has extra room for heaving dishes of roast potatoes and vegetables etc. In fact there's even enough room that the cooks have been making some meals even more special with flowers or candles!

Our cooks also of course make sure the children are very well looked after. The top photo reminds me how they make a special fuss of any student who has a birthday while they are with us. So a reminder to visiting staff to let us know if there are any birthdays and we will make a cake, put the candles on and get the banners out.

Tuck Shop Developments

 Schools this Summer have enjoyed shopping in our new enlarged and improved Tuck Shop. Taking advantage of over twice the amount of room Debbie has expanded the product range of goods for sale and there are now several exciting new lines in gifts and souvenirs that are proving very popular with students.

In fact we think it wont be long before Debbie has a whole chain of shops and franchises coming to a place near you along with on-line shopping as well!

We recommend for a 5 day stay that students bring a maximum of £8-£10 and that limits are set by visiting staff on what can be spent on 'tuck'. We do after all feed them well on three meals a day! With an increasing turnover and increased product range Debbie has more work to do with stock taking and reordering and to help with this and auditing requirements we now have even got a till! This replaces the old cash box and allows recording on till rolls for money spent each week. As this is a job carried out by visiting staff we ask them to familiarise themselves with the easy to use instructions that explain all.

The profit from our tuck shop goes on buying new recreational equipment for student use and to charity.

Comfortable Viewing & Great Spectator Sport

The Trapeze Bar Jump (aka The Leap of Faith) has always made excellent spectator sport. Although at first glance it might appear to be a very individual challenge, certainly requiring a great deal of personal commitment to undertake, we have over the years also found it to be an excellent team activity. This is because the group empathise and share the experience and we hope to create a very supportive and encouraging ethos to the activity whereby each participant is supported and willed on by their peers. In this way we have often found individuals push their comfort zones to achieve things thay could not do on their own. They then have great satisfaction and pride in their achievement, whether it is getting half way up the pole and having a swing off or making it all the way on to the platform and actually leaping and catching the bar. The challenge can graduated as above and also by moving the bar nearer or further from the platform according to individual's height and challenge threshold.

We've now made this excellent spectator sport more comfortable viewing by positioning a bench for sitting on in a safe and good viewing position.

The viewing bench for the leap of Faith has proved so popular that we've gone and added one for the Zip Wire as well. This activity also requires team work to operate as their are jobs to do to get the zip rope back to the top of the tree for the next person. Retrieval ropes need pulling, ropes need unclipping and people climbing the ladder need their safety rope pulling on. So it's not all sitting about, but once you have gone down you can have a quick sit down to relax after your adrenaline rush and watch other experiencing the same thrill before congratulating them on their achievement.