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There are a lot of things to celebrate at the moment in the North Wales Outdoor Education Service. Can you believe it’s 50 years since groups first started coming to Nant BH Centre? It never ceases to amaze us just how often someone we come into contact with mentions that they remember coming to either Nant BH or Pentrellyncymer Centres when they were at school. Sometimes it’s delivery people coming to the Centre, or people the staff meet out and about when they’re away from work, or if not them personally it’s family relations. All of them quickly start to reminisce about how great a time they had, the memories of what they achieved still vivid. The Centres have influenced the lives of so many people who live in the area, but when we consider how long we’ve been operating for local schools , it shouldn’t really be such a surprise! We will be celebrating 50 years of groups coming to Nant BH this year with an Open Weekend of events in October 2016.
Wales is celebrating this year too as it has been declared “Wales 2016:The Year of Adventure”. This is aiming to promote Wales as the world’s capital of adventure tourism, and encouraging individuals to go out and have an adventure to “find your epic”. We know many of the students coming to the Centres have experienced adventures that will be cherished lifetime memories. As part of our birthday weekend we’re going to organize an adventure race based around the Centre, so go on, give it a go, enter a team, or try it alone, have an adventure!
Our final celebration is that both Centres have just been awarded The Gold Standard quality badge from AHOEC (The Association of Heads of Outdoor Education Centres). This is the highest award for excellence in providing high quality residential outdoor education. Both Centres were inspected and rated excellent to outstanding in all areas, which cover customer care, safety management, facilities, environmental sustainability and quality assurance. It’s a great recognition the value that Conwy has placed in maintaining the provision of the Outdoor Service, and also of all the hard work put in by the staff teams in both Centres, to ensure that groups coming to us continue to receive the experience of a lifetime, and that hopefully they’ll still be talking about their adventures when the Centres get to their 100th birthday!!
