AwalkwithMO

This would be the second time we’ve taken a trip down to north of Devon at Skern Lodge – Appledore/Bideford. The team of Graduates have now expanded from 5 to 9 graduates – so you could say this year’s trip to skern lodge should be a bit more challenging and interesting as we had some new faces to the team.

Just a recap (from last year’s blog) the purpose of this trip was to escape from our daily work environment (for 5days) to a different scenery, where we are tasked with challenging obstacles that could help enhance our performance and increase our confidence, whilst trying to adapt to the new environment. A program incorporated into our 2-year Graduate development scheme.

We stayed at Skern Lodge outdoor activity centre where we did both daily structured classroom sessions along with an outdoor diverse range of activities. The purpose of the classroom element was to instill and explore various individual and team-building skills.

For the classroom aspect, we were taught various types of learning styles, how to receive and give feedback, stages of a teams development, how you see yourself compared to how others see you and more. Finally, discovering whether you are a task, team or individual orientated person or perhaps bounce around those areas depending on the environment or task at hand.

The outdoor activities saw the implementation of these classroom training to explore our leadership styles, strengths, weaknesses and how we could provide feedback to one and other to help enhance our performance and improve our confidence. These actvities were there to test our resilience, responsibility, accountability, ownership and growth mindset.

Below are some of the outdoor activities we did :

• Tunnelling
• Archery
• Abseiling
• Crate stacking
• Rock climbing
• Camping expedition
• Hiking
• Design, build and test a Trebuchet
• Powerboat ride

My favourites:

Abseiling down a 180 – 190 feet cliff – We had a little practice at Skern Lodge centre on one of their 10feet abseils but nothing compared to and prepared us for the real challenge. We undertook this abseiling at the heart of Hartland – which was 40min away from our campus.

After hiking through the beautiful naturistic scenery of Hartland we arrived at a stop to face one of our greatest fears, yet. As you’d expect it was huge and tall hence instantaneously it threw panic and anxiety in the air allowing some to drop out from the challenge.

For the few of us that participated, the fear kicked in at the very start of getting the harnesses strapped on and the approach to the edge of the cliff – but once you’re there and take one step down you feel at ease and calm. An invaluable experience and one to remember. Funnily, to my own surprise, I did it twice and paused for a quick selfy halfway down.

Camping expedition– One of the 5 days we spent involved camping at Hartland. There was no room for posh and comfy camping tents as we had to build it with the materials given – After all that’s what Engineers do. We also collectively discussed the items we’d be needing on our kit list, as the plan was to spend the night, camping.

Therefore it was important that we took with us every essential item. Prior to that, we were given £25 to spend on breakfast to feed the belly of 9 people. You could picture everyone saying what they want to eat for breakfast with only £25 to spend. Compromise was the decider in this battle.

Hiking – The following morning after breakfast, we were tasked with a very old fashion traditional Map to rumble into the nature of Hartland. The aim was to walk to specific locations by collectively looking at the features and clues on the map. Doing this whilst hiking up and down the hills of Hartland was quite challenging. However, that’s the whole point – resilience.

Powerboat ride – We we’re encouraged to volunteer by hanging onto a doughnut whilst being dragged through the turbulent behaviour of the seawater of Appledore by a powerboat. Thanks to the buoyancy outfit that aided my lack of swimming knowledge but I had to let go of that fear and trust process. Another experience ticked off the bucket list

Surfing – A few of us volunteered to go for 6 am surfing. A reminder to myself – I can’t swim. So how is this going to work? The coach gave me reassurance and I was calm and ready to battle another fear.

If you’re wondering how I did during the 40 minutes we spent surfing. I couldn’t stand up not even once (I was very…close though) as I was constantly been swept by the turbulent waves but I kept on going regardless. The experience was one of a kind, loved it. But hey.. that seawater was COLD (at first)!.

The overall aim of this experience is to set out individual aims and objectives and what we think the obstacles could be along the way and to do the best YOU can to adapt. Lastly, at the end of the course we all had the chance to reflect on week and populate an ACTION PLAN to help ENHANCE our PERFORMANCE and IMPROVE our CONFIDENCE both personally and professionally. An experience that’ll forever go down as one of my favourite memories of being a Graduate.

Link to : Skern lodge