Wild Wednesdays at Bowlees Visitor Centre

During the half-term school holidays, our nature exploration events, Wild Wednesdays, returned with a fungi focus. This family friendly event around Bowlees Visitor Centre is part of a series of sessions helping young explorers to connect with the natural world.

Kennedy Page, from the North Pennines National Landscape team and member of the North East Fungi Society gave an introduction to mushrooms and fungi. The young people were really engaged with the discussion, asking questions and wanting to find out more. Kennedy explained to the group the importance of following safety guidelines when exploring fungi and to always use multiple methods to identify mushrooms.

The young explorers made their way to the woods surrounding Bowlees Visitor Centre, where Kennedy led a fun game helping budding naturalists to discover the parts of a mushroom. Everyone loved this interactive activity and were keen to use their newfound knowledge to identify mushrooms. Kennedy discussed the ‘wood wide web’, the underground mushroom network that plants and trees use to communicate, trade nutrients and put up defences in times of stress.

Kennedy encouraged the group to explore the woods, looking for fungi. Straightaway, an excited shout went out saying, ‘I’ve found a mushroom’. Everyone went through what they had learned, by looking at visual clues to try and identify the mushroom in a reference guide. The families were confident with identification and were excited to discover more fungi.

Throughout the session Kennedy was on hand to give guidance and explain about the different mushrooms that had been found. The families discovered lots of interesting mushrooms including, milk caps, waxcaps, russulas, boletes, and ink caps.

A short while later everyone wandered to Low Force and searched for fungi near the waterfall. The damp environment here was good for different types of mushrooms, including various types of bracket, winter chanterelles and purple deceivers. Kennedy’s experience and her trusty guidebook helped the families to narrow down the type of mushroom and understand the varieties.

During the session, the group found over 20 different species of fungi and everyone said that they felt closer to nature and understood more about mushrooms.

Kennedy said, “It is great to get involved with these events, engaging everyone with nature and the environment. Young explorers like to discover the outdoors and Wild Wednesdays are a brilliant way to find out more about the world in which they live.”

Wild Wednesdays are run by the North Pennines National Landscape team. This session was part of the Tees-Swale: naturally connected programme, funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund using money raised by National Lottery players.