Adventure

Teenagers are wired for adventure, adrenaline and challenge. Our Adventure Department is built for them!

Whether it's mountain biking, paddle sports, mountain adventures, rock climbing, bush craft, slacklining orienteering... there is so much on offer at Dean Close.

Our Head of Adventure has experience leading expeditions in trekking, paddling, biking and volunteering all around the world, including in the South American Andes and Amazon, Canadian Rockies, East and West Africa, Nepal, the Alps and Arctic Norway.
 
 
"Pupils can bring their adventure ideas to us and we’ll work to bring them to life!"

Adventures start in the School's grounds....

Our bike park for mountain bikers

Our climbing wall and bouldering facilities

Our swimming pool for kayakers, paddleboarders and canoeists

Our woodlands and brook for bushcraft, hammocks and slacklining

As technical skill develops, we make the most of our local area:

  • Mountain bikers hit the Forest of Dean, Cleeve Hill, Leckhampton, 417 Bike Park and Cranham Woods. Some of the best mountain biking in the UK is on our doorstep...
  • Climbers use The Warehouse in Gloucester, Boulders in Cheltenham and rock climbing in the Wye Valley and on Cleeve Hill.
  • Paddlers learn their game at Croft Farm, the Cotswold Water Park, the River Avon, the River Wye and Cardiff International White Water Centre.
  • Adventures on foot can happen in the Cotswolds, the Wye Valley, Black Mountains, Brecon Beacons, Snowdonia and further afield, an escape from the norm and breath of mountain air.

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades
Forever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! 
Alfred Lord Tennyson