Dukeshouse Wood Outdoor Centre

In the past I have spend a lot of time at the old Gateshead LEA Outdoor Centre, Dukehouse Wood, Hexham, Northumberland.

The centre is recently under new Kingswood management and I went back to the centre today with some primary colleagues from the Musselburgh Cluster for an inspection visit. Since my last visit they have spent nearly 1.5 million on the place and will be spending about this again between now and March.

I like the work that they have done and it was great to see so many children having such a positive experience. I was also really impressed with all the staff that we ment and vision for the centre.

The reason that we were on an inspection visit is that we are in the process of looking at the logistics for a cluster camp in October 2009. The camp would involve all of the schools from our associated primary schools. This is a huge but important task and today we started to take the first small steps into making it happen.

Comments

[Stuart Meldrum]

Wow, that sounds like a massive undertaking, especially for the size of Musselburgh cluster. I'll be interested to hear how it works out.

[OllieBray]

Hi Stuart.

Yep, this is going to be one heck of an undertaking. But like with other projects (eg: Guitar Hero) if we can do it with the size of Musselburgh we can do it anywhere! I'll keep you posted. There may be an opportunity to come with us on an 'inspection weekend' in March 2009 - I'll keep your name in mind if we have any extra spaces? See you soon. OB

[Alastair Seagroatt]

Good luck with it, I used to organise 150 kids from Craigmillar going to Lochgoil & it was a fairly epic undertaking, especially as we looked after the kids ourselves.

It's good to see investment taking place in Outdoor Education & if the Scottish Initiative goes ahead there should be even more.