We deliver life-enriching adventures, create memories that last a lifetime and inspire a love for the great outdoors with the next generation.
Specialising in residential adventure camps, activity holidays, overseas expeditions and ski trips, we’ve delivered inspirational learning to millions of children and young people helping them discover their potential .
But our real secret is our incredible people. We love what we do, and it shows.
Our story began all the way back in 1955 when a young engineer named Peter Gordon Lawrence embarked on his first canoe holiday down the River Danube. He was so inspired by his experience that he was determined to share the life-changing benefits of adventure with others.
In 1957 he formed ‘PGL Voyages’ and began leading canoe trips for young adults along the River Wye, sharing his passion for the great outdoors. Fast forward to today and many things have changed, but one thing remains the same… our purpose of enriching young lives through adventure.
We’ve come such a long way since that first canoe holiday in 1957. Over six decades we’ve grown enormously because we’re passionate about what we do.
Today, our activity centres span across the UK, France and Australia, and we take pride in being the UK’s number one provider of outdoor education, hosting hundreds of thousands of young people every year. Our newest centre, Newby Wiske Hall in Yorkshire, showcases the ground-breaking innovations we’ve made to elevate activity centre design, as we continue to raise the bar, and share the life-changing benefits of outdoor adventure with even more of the next generation.
As we grow, our culture evolves too. It’s difficult to put into words (we’d prefer you to experience it first-hand!), but our company values guide all our decisions, define our beliefs, and underpin everything we do. Though simple on the surface, when combined, these values create the exceptional experience that sets PGL apart for both our guests and colleagues.
This isn’t the end of our story. We’re not ready to stand still. We’re committed to our future growth, to even bigger and better adventures, to enriching more lives, and together with the other sector-leading brands in our family; NST, European Study Tours and StudyLink we’ll continue to be trailblazers in the in educational travel industry.
Now more than ever, we believe that enriching outdoor experiences should be available to all, but sadly not all have access to it. This is why we have launched our Breakthrough Fund, providing hundreds of free and discounted places every year to pupils and families those who are most in need.
We are committed to playing a part in creating a brighter future for all, regardless of socio-economic background.
PGL Careers
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to