Carrying on camping

A GRINNING giant of a man comes bounding up the steps at Featherstone Castle to greet me. He introduces himself as Ian Johnson, the course director, but for a second, all I can focus on are the milk bottle white legs beneath his shorts and his hat - a kind of fabric helmet with horns. He has the air of a Timmy Mallett-style children's TV presenter and seems ideally suited to his job, leading seven and ten-day holidays for youngsters aged from nine to 15.

The company Ian works for, The Active Training and Education (ATE) Trust, is involved in the Government's Get Real project, spearheaded by School Standards Minister David Miliband. It aims to give 2,500 youngsters the chance to attend residential camps this summer, with plans to extend this to 20,000 next year. Among those being targeted are 380 children from Teesside, Durham, Tyneside, Tees Valley, and Northumberland.

Although staying at camps can cost hundreds of pounds, parents on low incomes can pay as little as £25, with the choice including specialist holidays in robotics and the performing arts. The Government aims ultimately to enable every child to attend at least one camp during their school career and such is its commitment, it has already made available £12.5m in Lottery funding.

While summer camps are relatively uncommon in Britain, they are an integral part of growing up for many thousands of children abroad. In France, for example, an estimated 1.5 million every year attend holidays run by one company alone, while in the US, an annual figure of up to ten million enjoy the summer camp experience.

But while the prospect of log cabins and apple pie camaraderie may inspire youngsters and their parents in the States, what can British camps do to tempt surly teenagers to try the camp experience? Keen to show me, Ian takes me to a field outside the magnificent but internally basic Featherstone Castle, about 25 miles west of Hexham, in Northumberland, where the current intake is playing a game.

It is the last day of the 12 to 14-year-olds' holiday and it is immediately apparent from the easy banter and tactile interaction that the group has bonded. The game involves catching and linking arms with a partner, and boys and girls walk around happily attached to each other. Among the group, from all over the country, are childlike-looking youngsters who run around energetically, unhampered by the self-consciousness of adolescence, and young women with bare midriffs and attitude. Yet although they dip in and out of the game, pleading tiredness or needing the toilet, they still seem happy to be part of the group. Ian says that while he's keen for the children to join in as much as possible, he doesn't insist on it. "It's not a boot camp," he says.

The 39-year-old Scot, who like all those involved in running courses is a volunteer, is in "real life" an engineering lecturer with the Open University. He first became involved in the Malvern-based ATE Trust, then called Colony Holidays, as a child when he played games on the very same field we are standing in. "I came to Featherstone Castle when I was 11 and it was a completely life-changing experience because I was a very quiet and withdrawn child. I came and did another five then I started as a monitor. I've been involved with the organisation as an adult for seven years," he says.

Ian explains that monitors, of which there are eight among this group, are a rank above the children but below the director and assistant director. Normally in their late teens or early 20s, and often students or student teachers - although there was once a nun in her 50s - they act as older brothers or sisters, eating and sleeping with their own small groups.

"The monitors are the key. We are really here to make the monitor/child relationship the one that counts," says Ian. An important bonus, which he is keen to stress, is that monitors gain valuable leadership experience guaranteed to impress employers.

Yet while Ian and his assistant, Rachel Hossak, assume more distant roles, it's clear that the children see them very much as big kids. Everyone uses first names and youngsters are constantly trying to steal Ian's hat - an ongoing game, it seems, of its own. He takes this entirely in his large stride and keeps a constant eye on proceedings, frequently interrupting our discussion to answer a query or start a new round. Whenever he talks to the children, it's very much on their level, and he matches them joke for bad joke for sheer silliness.

He says that over the course of a holiday everyone loses their inhibitions. "The first day or two everybody is eyeing up each other but by the end it's all relaxed," says Ian. "You can be typecast at school and come here and be someone completely different. You lose your own preconceptions of who you are."

The ATE Trust has a policy of making groups as eclectic as possible, trying to achieve a geographically and socially diverse mix and splitting up children from the same school. It also tries to send youngsters to venues away from home, so many at Featherstone Castle and its other Northern outpost, Langton Hall, near Malton, North Yorkshire, are from further south. In terms of activities, it keeps things simple, preferring games, crafts and outings, with a balance of indoor and outdoor, to whitewater rafting. Walkmans and GameBoys are banned and children are denied even that most precious link with civilisation, the mobile phone.

Ian says: "We don't have a set programme - it's up to the directors and we all mould the holidays to suit what sort of children they are and the weather. It's constantly responding to what the children want."

The overall objective, he says, is to create a safe environment in which children feel free to enjoy themselves, learning in the process. "The aim is to show the children that they can have a good holiday, have fun with other children and adults and have a friendly, informal relationship with adults. We want them to see that in the space of a week, it's possible to build a happy and friendly community with people they haven't met before and doing things they haven't done before," says Ian.

While he hopes that every child gains in some way from their holiday, he says that some are completely transformed. He tells me that this group, for example, has gone from being typically exercise-shy to requesting a trip to the swimming baths, involving a three-mile hike. "We regularly see huge changes in children," he says. "We hope that every child will come along and have a nice holiday but for some children, it's life-changing."

Ian's sentiments are echoed by monitor Liz Macartney, 20, a student from Preston. "It's just the most rewarding thing in the world when you have a 14-year-old singing the most stupid song which at the beginning of the week they wouldn't have even opened their mouth for," she says.

I leave the group, with the genial Scot at its helm, as it heads eagerly indoors for another singsong.

* For more information about summer camps with The ATE Trust, ring 0845 456 1205