Special Camps
Beyond the Pitch
Leadership, alpine adventure and residential summer schools for ages 12 to 18.
Contact UsFour camps, four different jobs
These are the camps for children whose summer is not about a sport. A residential leadership camp in Ireland, an alpine adventure camp in Switzerland, and a fortnight living in an Oxford or Cambridge college, with summer schools in the USA as a further option. They are separate programmes with separate dates, chosen one at a time. Each does a job the others do not.
- A residential leadership camp in Ireland, with ropes courses, led Wicklow or Killarney hikes and a week-long group project.
- Structured public speaking in Ireland, each student building and delivering a short talk to peers for honest feedback.
- An alpine adventure camp in Switzerland, with high and low ropes under UIAA-certified guides at fixed instructor ratios.
- Led alpine hikes where students rotate navigation and pace, so every one of them takes a turn deciding.
- Evening leadership debriefs at both camps, naming what the group did well and what it plainly fumbled.
- A fortnight living in an Oxford or Cambridge college, with small-group supervisions, a chosen subject track and meals in hall.
- A leadership journal marked against a rubric, or a portfolio piece and provider certificate from the summer school.
Ireland, Switzerland & the UK- Ages 12–18
- 1–2 Weeks
- Priced to Your Brief
- Residential Camps & Colleges
- Leadership & Adventure
What they come home with
Every adventure camp has the same twenty seconds. A student stops halfway up the high ropes, harness on, guide below, and simply cannot make the next move. Teammates start calling, usually not the loud ones, and the foot moves. Nobody in that group forgets who was shouting for them. The rest of the programme is built to keep producing that.
- Public speaking — Ireland has each student build and deliver a short talk to peers, then sit and take honest feedback on it.
- Decision-making under load — alpine hikes rotate navigation and pace, so every student takes a turn being the one who decides.
- Independence — an Oxbridge fortnight means managing your own laundry, timetable and reading with nobody chasing you, which is the real test.
- Safety at adventure ratios — one Picknic chaperone per six in Switzerland, one per eight elsewhere, plus UIAA-certified guides working at their own fixed ratios.
- An honest answer — some come home certain that college life suits them, others relieved that it does not. Both answers are worth the fortnight.
Who it’s for
Students aged twelve to eighteen, matched to the camp rather than the other way round. Switzerland suits a physically able child who wants to be challenged outdoors and can clear a medical declaration. Ireland suits the quiet one whose confidence needs a structured push. The Oxbridge fortnight suits an academically curious fifteen to eighteen-year-old wondering what that life is actually like.
The summer school is not an admissions advantage, and it is wrong for a family buying one. It is academic enrichment in licensed college rooms, nothing more. Switzerland is unsuitable for anyone with a mobility or cardiac limitation the medical declaration would flag, and each of these camps needs a different visa, so a family with one free fortnight and no time for paperwork should talk to us before booking flights.
Which camp fits
which child
Everything you
need to know
Testing1
Demo 1
How much supervision is there, especially on the adventure camp?
Does the summer school help with a university application?
Which camp should we pick, and can we combine two?
When do we book, and do these need different visas?