A GROUP of Barrow apprentices took on a challenging four day residential and developed their team building skills.  

First year apprentices from Kimberly-Clark in Barrow attended Hawes-End

educational centre, near Keswick and overlooking Derwent Water.  

The purpose of the trip was to encourage, challenge, improve confidence, develop trust, for the apprentices to support each other

and find out their strengths and weaknesses. 

The residential takes them out of their comfort zone you see how they adapt and cope with the various challenges. 

The tests and challenges include safely scaling an eight foot wall, climbing, ghyll scrambling, kayaking, and archery.

The group also did caving in the Yorkshire Dales.

Gary Gibson, apprentice supervisor at Kimberly-Clark said: "The residential is a tiring, cold and wet but very enjoyable and rewarding week. It gives the apprentices the opportunity to learn more about themselves, each other and how they cope in different situations, enhancing their personal development."

Apprentice Harry Mellen said: "The overall experience on our residential trip was fantastic. There was a wide range of activities such as indoor rock climbing, ghyll scrambling, abseiling, archery, caving and kayaking. All these activities were extremely enjoyable and required us to help each other and work together as a team. 

"The best part of the trip was the kayaking because this was one of the few competitive activities where we could have more fun. All activities were excellent however when doing the ghyll scrambling it made us extremely cold and soaking. This was also one of the more challenging tasks because we had to walk up a river which had quite a strong flow so it did test us but in the end we got through it with ease. 

It was a great experience and I would definitely do it again."