Prep Trips

Great Stories Begin with Adventure...

The horizon for learning goes far beyond the buildings at Hazlegrove. The contagious camaraderie that comes from a fantastic school trip and exploration out side of the classroom helps to build memories for life and to bring an added depth to learning. We recognise that building confidence and self-esteem allow children to flourish, develop resilience and strengthen relationships amongst their peers. This can help academic progress and social and emotional development.

Three different kinds of trips!

The school offers curriculum based trips where children can enjoy at first-hand aspects of the curriculum they are studying in class. Some examples might include the Year 1 visit to Stourhead, Year 2 Visit to Swanage, Year 5 visit to Bovington Tank Museum, Year 7 to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard or Year 8 Geography Field Trip to Lulworth Cove. There is no charge for these trips which include transport, ticket entry, workshops and talks.

Residential trips -  There are four excellent residential trips for children in Years 5 – 8, listed below as well as optional residential trips including the biennial Ski Trip and the Exmoor Challenge. 

Residential Trip to Naturesbase – Environmental Educational Centre in West Wales Year 5

The Year 5 children enjoy a trip to a farm in the beautiful Welsh countryside where they engage in all sorts of team building challenges including stamp orienteering around the farm, den building, fire lighting with flint and steel, outdoor history with a focus on the Iron Age, feeding the lambs as well as serving delicious meals to each other. This wonderful five day trip builds on and extends the Year 5 Humanities and Science curricula. 

French Trip Year 6

The children travel to Normandy in France, for five days (four nights) and have a wonderful time exploring French culture and practising the language in many different contexts. Animateurs lead the activities including a town trail in Avranches, a shopping challenge at a local market as well as an exchange morning with another school. They visit a goat farm, a caramel factory, make bread, play boules. swim and throughout the trip eat delicious French cuisine, all of which is homemade at the gite where they stay.

This is a wonderful immersion into the French language!

Residential River Dart Trip – Year 7

For more than ten years we have been taking our Year 7s to the River Dart Country Park, an excellent Outdoor Education Centre near Ashburton, where the children have the opportunity to learn about themselves and each other in a completely different environment, The children always achieve so much during a week crammed full of super activities - whether it be hanging from a zip-wire, crate stacking, raft building, high ropes, splashing each other whilst kayaking on the lake, or applying a mud face pack whilst caving. It is a fantastic week to team build. 

Residential Year 8 Leavers’ Trip

This action-packed week of activities and outdoor living in North Cornwall takes place after Common Entrance examinations in the Summer term of Year 8 and is always a highlight of the year for our Year8s and a fabulous way for them to end their time at Hazlegrove. They all treasure teh special memories they make on a trip that includes cycling the Camel Trail, surfing, coasteering, walking the stunning coastal path, visitin the Eden Project as well as sea safaris, camp fires and precious time spent with friends on the beach.

Exmoor Challenge

A small group of our Year 7s will be chosen to take part in the Exmoor Challenge, a testing 16-mile hike across varied terrain, whilst arriving at eight different checkpoints at set times. It is a wonderful team building exercise and the children develop their skills of map reading, compass bearings, teamwork and observation as they follow the route and complete a quiz along the way. 

Optional Biennial Ski Trip Years 5 – 8

The trip takes place every other year and takes a group of children from Years 5-8 to Les Orres, France. There is a fine selection of slopes for all abilities as well as fantastic food and the obligatory snow ball fights!