Stephen Bleach, head travel writer

I saw Molly being picked on by the dorm bully. I saw her bewildered and scared, unable to cope with the activities. I saw her sobbing into her pillow, missing her mum. And then I woke up in a cold sweat. A health warning: don’t send your kid to camp unless you’re prepared for the nightmares.

Molly had been keen to go, possibly as a result of her addiction to boarding-school stories — the lighter sort, in which anything with a dorm is depicted as an adult-free promised land of midnight feasts and practical jokes.

My dreams had dwelt more on the Tom Brown’s Schooldays end of things, and after her first night away I was convinced she was being roasted over an open fire. In a panic, I phoned PGL. Was she okay?

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Of course she was okay. In fact, she was far too busy building a shelter in a camp-craft lesson to come to the phone. I should have known. I’d had a good snoop around PGL’s centre at Marchants Hill, Surrey, the day before, and what I saw was encouraging: clean premises, good facilities, heaps of exciting stuff to do, a huge gang of unfailingly upbeat young staff. And no open fires.

Chatting to the operations manager, Dan Grewcock, was equally reassuring. No child is forced into an activity they can’t handle: they’re encouraged to set their own goals, and if that means they only reach a step or two up the climbing wall, that’s seen as an achievement in itself.

Supervision is constant, and they’re kept busy morning till night with games, sports and chants — there’s hardly time to miss home. Duty managers sleep in the same block as the kids, and are available all night. If a child is genuinely distressed or lonely — it’s rare, Grewcock reckoned — the managers are on the phone to mum or dad to decide if they should stick it out.

For all that, it’s a leap of faith. Sending your little innocent into an alien environment to sink or swim is not easy for the modern, hands-on parent. But kids only make progress if, at the right moment, we stand back and let them. The tricky bit is judging when that moment is. Fortunately, we got this one right, and the benefits were palpable from the moment I picked Molly up. She was more confident, self-assured and mature: she’d done six months’ worth of growing up in three days. While I’m still no fan of boarding school, perhaps those Victorian parents had something; to think our children can’t survive without mum and dad is just hubris on our part, and damaging for them. As long as they’re willing, do the decent thing and let them go. As Molly said, “Kids’ camp is brilliant.”

Travel brief: a two-night, three-day taster break at PGL Marchants Hill costs £99. See below for more details.

Molly Bleach, chief travel writer, Jr.

I was a bit nervous when I went to PGL. I’d never been away on my own before. I brought my doll, Joseph, and my bear, Honey, in case I didn’t have anyone to cuddle. Dad drove me there and put all my things in my room, and then kept hanging around because I think he was worried about me. I told him to GO AWAY because he’d show me up in front of everyone.

Then I waited in the sports hall. That was the worst bit. There were lots of kids running around and I didn’t know anyone, so I didn’t have anyone to play with. Then we got put in our groups. There were 12 in mine: I was the youngest, and I think the oldest was nine. We went straight off for our first activities. That’s when it started getting really good.

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