Keith Curle led his Carlisle United players out to the Lake District yesterday for a surprise day of team bonding.

The United boss instructed his players to gather at Brunton Park on Thursday morning, with the squad expecting to take part in a regular training session.

Instead, they were bussed out to Graythwaite, near Hawkshead, to take part in a challenging day of fitness work and team exercises put on by Cassius Camps.

The organisation aim to aid the “development and performance of professional sports teams, companies and individuals through adventurous and challenging training camps”.

Blues manager Curle, whose side face Bradford City at Valley Parade tomorrow, said the idea of taking the players out of their usual surroundings was all with the goal of “unifying” his new-look squad.

“First and foremost, it’s about taking the players out of their natural, normal working environment,” he said.

“You get the feeling when I came here last week with Lee Dykes and Lee Fearn to have a look around, and we met Phil [Ercolano, founder of Cassius Camps] and got introduced to Cassius and what they are about.

“As soon as you’re here, you get inspired – that was the first feeling I had, it’s an inspirational place.

"Collectively, myself and the two Lees wanted to share it with our team and obviously we spoke to Phil about the work that he does here, and it’s a fantastic environment to create and promote the team ethic.

“We’ve done our pre-season slightly differently, slightly varied. We know a lot of people have pre-season tours where they go away for five or six games and stay away for a week or 10 days. We haven’t done that – we’ve tried to do things slightly differently, because of different factors.

“This is the first step towards unifying the group of players that we’ve got. We’ve got a squad of players, but within that squad of players we want to have a team ethic.”

Skipper Danny Grainger echoed the thoughts of his manager, saying that the experience would help with the camaraderie within the United camp as they bid to improve on last season’s struggles in League Two.

“We didn’t know – we just got told to be at the stadium for quarter to six [on Thursday morning], and we jumped up on the bus,” said the 28-year-old.

“It’s good for team building, team spirit and things like that. It’s been good crack on the bus on the way down, there’s a few tired heads and all that sort of stuff, but it’s good. It’s a time, in pre-season, when you need to stick together and make sure that you’re ready for the start of the season.

“The boys have all blended in really well, the new lads are a bunch of fantastic lads and everything is going well so far.” One of those new arrivals, striker Jabo Ibehre, said the physically and mentally challenging aspect of the training camp not only helped with the integration of new faces, but drew the best out of the squad.

“You can see how everyone’s trying to push each other along,” said the former Colchester United forward. “Everyone’s getting pushed to their limits and you’re getting that extra bit more because your team-mates are getting you through it as well, so you’re getting your optimum stuff.”

Ercolano, founder of Cassius Camps, said the benefits were noticeable even just a few hours into the session. And he also revealed that United’s charges compared favourably to some of the top-flight stars who have undertaken similar sessions with the company.

“You can see them actively working on them – enhancing team-mate relationships and growing that unity. They’ve signed a few players so we want to try and integrate them as quickly as possible,” he said.

“You can see them communicating really well now, so if we can show them the power of good communication that would be great, and mentally they’ll take a lot away from this.

“I was anxious-slash-excited to see how they developed as a group, and these guys – compared to some of the Premier League players we’ve had on the course – have done exceptionally well.”