Two-Week Expedition Summer Camp in the Scottish Highlands

The fortnight is an outdoor expedition programme, not a lesson-based course: there are no classroom lessons. Young people work in teams with instructors qualified through Mountain Training UK and British Canoeing, learning what each expedition demands — mountain travel and navigation, sea kayak technique on exposed coastline, camp craft, fire lighting, foraging and shelter building with ropes, hazel spars and old yacht sails. The expeditions get progressively more committing across the two weeks, ending with the journey to Cape Wrath and Sandwood Bay.

One price covers the residential fortnight: accommodation at the adventure school and on expedition, all meals, every expedition and activity with its instruction, use of the centre's technical and safety equipment, and the instructor-accompanied coach transfer between Inverness Airport and the centre at the start and end of the camp. Participants travel to Inverness themselves; the school asks parents to agree travel plans with Rebecca before booking flights.

Between expeditions young people sleep in a collection of Norwegian-style wooden cabins clustered just yards from the seashore. The main building, with its distinctive red roof, holds the living and dining room, several bunk rooms and separate loos and showers for boys and girls; further bunk rooms are in the outer cabins, along with a drying room for wet kit. Bunkrooms are spacious, clean and well lit, all on the ground floor, with windows onto the loch, and all beds are made up with clean sheets and duvets on arrival. Bedrooms are arranged so that young people share with others of their own age. On expedition the teams camp out with their instructors, and one night is spent on an uninhabited island sleeping under yacht sails.

All meals are home-cooked on site and there is plenty of food: a cooked breakfast, a packed lunch to carry out for the day, and a two-course hot evening meal — either soup and a main course or a main course and dessert. On expedition the teams cook for themselves with their instructors. The kitchen is nut-free and caters for most special dietary requirements when told well in advance, as the centre is a long way from the shops.

Three major expeditions over the fortnight: three days in the mountains of Eryri and the north-west Highlands, sea kayaking along dramatic coastline, and a final expedition to Cape Wrath and Sandwood Bay. Alongside them: rock climbing and scrambling, hill walking with navigation, a night surviving on an uninhabited island, and a beach day on golden sands. Evenings at the centre are supervised social time — volleyball, table football, cards, chess, backgammon — or preparation for the next day's expedition.

The adventure school sits on the shore of Loch a' Chadh-Fi in Sutherland, with its own workboats used for fishing and for the crossing to survival island. Alongside the cabins there is a large kit store and workshop and a drying room for clothing and equipment. The centre has no mobile phone signal, no television and no wifi. Ridgway Adventure Ltd is registered with the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority and licensed for climbing, trekking and watersports, and all staff are background-checked through the Disclosure Scotland PVG scheme.

This is the camp the adventure school opened with: when the doors opened in 1969 the first group along the track was a two-week international summer camp for 12 to 17-year-olds, and some participants today are the children of former campers. Rebecca Ridgway and her husband Mark live on site all year and see the young people daily, often at mealtimes or out in the workboats. Participants come from all over the world, and the school sometimes limits how many on one camp share the same first language so that the group works in English. Only one camp runs at a time, with a maximum of 36 young people. Phones and valuables are collected and kept safe on arrival.