Residentials

RESIDENTIAL DATES 2024-2025

Fuel & Download Weekend Away 2025

14th-16th March 2025
New venue for 2025 is Fairthorne Manor near Botley, Southampton.
This year, we’re going to be joining with Fuel, the youth group from the Parish of Chandlers Ford.
Open to everyone in school years 10-13.
See below for the photos from our last weekend away.
More details to follow.

Booking opening soon
XPC Weekend Away

16th-18th May 2025
Open to everyone in school years 5-6.
Venue is Oakwood Youth Challenge in Wokingham.
A weekend of fun, community building, and plenty of space! Join us for wide games, activities, Bible teaching, sung worship, crafts, chill-out time, and much more fun!
See you there!

Not currently available
Download Week Away

18th-22nd August 2025
We’d love to see you at the Download Week Away at Sexey’s School in Bruton, Somerset. It’s a new venue for us, so come and check it out.
Why join us? Great Bible teaching, masses of fun, including a day out, team challenges, sport, worship and small groups, all in a brilliant community.
Open to those finishing year 9,
up to and including those finishing year 13.

Can't wait for next year!
Fuel & Pathfinders Weekend Away

7th-9th November 2025 (TBC)
We may be joining with Fuel again in 2025 - the youth group from the Parish of Chandlers Ford!
If you’re in school years 7-9, we’d love to welcome you to this weekend.
We had such a great time in 2024, getting to know each other better, having some great Bible teaching, taking part in sung worship, and having more fun than you would think possible, including laser tag in a forest. Check out the photos below.
And you get to go overseas! We travel together to the Westbrook Urban Saints Centre on the Isle of Wight.

Can't wait for next year!

Residential Information

Kit list and final details for Fuel/Pathfinder Weekend Away

See residential booking guidelines

Residential subsidy form

Find out more about our safeguarding

Residential FAQs

The children and young people are in small groups for time away, so one or two leaders are specifically looking out for them.
We ask who children would like to share rooms with, and make every effort to put them with at least one or two of the people they named. If we aren’t able to do that, we will try to inform the people involved beforehand. We also place children in teams, so they meet people outside their normal friendship group. Our aim is not just to strengthen existing friendships, but also to help everyone build new ones.
On longer residentials, we have ‘angels’ to encourage every individual and send notes to them. If you have a concern during the time away, do please contact the residential leader. If your child becomes very upset during a residential, we will ring you as soon as practically possible to discuss how you want us to proceed.
We are aware that children and young people need sleep. We will do our very best to ensure that your child’s room has the light off at a reasonable time and is quiet soon after. Please contact us if this is a particular concern before or during the event.
We will separate the boys’/girls’ sleeping areas: sometimes on separate floors, sometimes in separate buildings. These are clearly marked and strictly adhered to. If your child is gender questioning, then please do have a conversation with us. We want to make sure they can attend and will have a good time.
There will be some free time if young people need to do homework, but please contact the residential leader if extra time is needed.
We have a First Aider who will have done a minimum of a half day course in emergency First Aid. We will contact you immediately if there is a serious accident involving your child.
Please do tell us if your child has any additional needs, even if it is that they sleep better on an upper bunk, or they are feeling nervous because they don’t know many people, or they have particular eating habits or it’s their first time away from home.
We will try very hard to accommodate any special needs. Please let your child know too that we have seen almost everything before, and we’ll work hard to make sure they have the best time.
This is normally possible and we’d love to facilitate this. Please contact us, before you organise transport.
We do have a budget for those who cannot afford residentials. There is a subsidy form above. We don’t want this to be the reason your child doesn’t attend. If they’re a part of the group, we want them there. Pay what you can, when you can.
Any swimming will have a trained lifeguard. Other activities will have properly qualified leaders where appropriate. As part of our policy on residentials, risk assessments are always completed, and we have very experienced leaders on every residential, who will continually be doing dynamic risk assessment. Our first aim is always child safety.
All of our leaders have an enhanced DBS (previously an enhanced CRB) certificate and will have completed the necessary Church of England safeguarding training. In addition, we have very clear guidelines, which are given to each leader and strictly abided by, including not going into a room alone with a young person.
The legal requirement in terms of ratio of leaders to children is 1:8, but in fact we normally have a ratio closer to 1:4.
We welcome everyone in the right age group. They don’t need to have ever been to XPC, Pathfinders, or Download, or church to come on one of our residentials. We’ve had people join us from Bahrain, France and the USA!
See also, How will my child be cared for?
Logistics should not be the reason a child doesn’t attend. Our teams like to say that nearly anything is possible. If, for example, getting to the ferry for a weekend away on the Isle of Wight is the problem, just get in touch and ask about a lift. Other parents/carers or leaders always have spare seats going down or coming back. The main thing for us is having your child with us, and we’ll work hard to get them there.

RADICAL LOVE 2024

We had an amazing time on the Fuel & Pathfinder Weekend Away over on the Isle of Wight! Take a look at the gallery below to relive our time over there.