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The Edventure Residential – A course highlight

At the end of each Start – Up course, the student team and staff go away for a few days to reflect on what has been achieved, what has been learned and to celebrate achievements.

For many of the students this is a highlight of the course.

Julia who took part in the Spring 2018 course has written a story about their teams residential which took place in Dorset.

The Edventure 10 residential

Week 10 of the Start up course felt like it was waiting for us just around the corner. After 9 intensive weeks, developing the Edspace project, learning various aspects of setting up a social enterprise and organising one big final event, the Edventure team had booked three days away with the students to wrap things up.

On the Monday morning we all met at the Welsh Mill Hub tired from the previous week but excited for the week ahead. We planned the food menu for the week, made a quick stop to food shop before heading south to Monkton Wyld Court in Dorset.


Monkton Wyld is a beautiful community centre set in a large country house, in the idyllic landscape of Dorset. It’s a place that focus on sustainability and low impact living, has a wonderful edible garden and some very cute farm animals. It is also located a stone throw away from the infamous Jurassic coast. Needless to say that our time was away was therefore shared between some down time at the farm, cooking some excellent meals, strolling along the beaches and cliffs of Lyme Regis searching for fossils and even a quick dip in the sea for the bravest!

However, the residential trip was not just all about leisure time. Our first evening we had a feedback session around the fire place together with Johannes and Amelia, followed by some future thoughts for Edspace.


The following morning we did a timeline walk, going through the course as a whole. The afternoon was spent on the beach, reflecting over the previous weeks, collecting the gold dust of what we had achieved and learned at Edventure. Graham joined us in the evening for another great meal and an evening surprise organised by Amelia and himself. Not much will be said about this in case future students read the blog apart from the fact that it was very exhilarating!

The next day we did some reflective drawing, had one-to-one sessions with Amelia and Graham talking about our future steps and eventually gathered as a group to talk about our future ideas and how we could help each other to develop them.


In the evening we celebrated with our final meal together and later gathered around the fire with the Monkton Wyld community for some beers, popcorn and acoustic guitar playing by Graham and Simon, one of the staple members of the community.

Thursday morning marked the end of the adventure. We tidied up the space and drove back to Frome in a rainy and gloomy morning. Back at the Welsh Mill Hub we said shared our last cup of tea together as the Start Up course students before braving the torrential rain into the next chapter of our own adventures.