Somewhere in Snowdonia, Wednesday morning. Muddy boots. No signal until now.

22 April 2026

I’m Stephen Harris, and I coordinate Gapuma Group’s annual sponsorship of West London Free School’s Outward Bound programme. This week, that sponsorship became very real indeed.

Twenty-three Year 8 and 9 pupils are with us at Ogwen Cottage – a National Trust property in the heart of Snowdonia, leased by the Outward Bound Trust as a residential centre. Alongside them are Hamizah Ahmad, the Geography teacher who organises the school’s outdoor education programme including its Duke of Edinburgh scheme, and Angus Kelly, another Geography teacher drafted in at the last minute as a replacement supervisor. They have been extraordinary.

So have the children.

Monday: the children arrived at lunchtime, and by mid-afternoon were already out – jogging, then swimming beneath a waterfall in the river. Tuesday: scrambling – unaided, no ropes, no harness – 250 metres up the face of a small mountain. Tough doesn’t begin to cover it. Today: abseiling, then an overnight wild camp in the mountains. Tomorrow morning: gorge climbing up a waterfall. Friday: the train from Bangor back to London, and a different group of young people than the ones who arrived.

That last point matters. A systematic review of 58 UK outdoor education studies found that almost all interventions produced measurable positive outcomes for young people. The Outward Bound Trust’s own data shows that 76% of participants finish their course with improved self-confidence, and – crucially – 88% of teachers report lasting improvements in pupils’ resilience three months later.

Watch a thirteen-year-old haul themselves up a rock face they were convinced was beyond them, and those statistics stop being abstract.

This is why Gapuma Group is proud to bring West London Free School here every year. Education that changes lives doesn’t always happen in a classroom.