Wild Wednesdays – nature based activities

Tees-Swale blog by Chloe Hedley, Community Engagement Trainee

During the school holidays in August 2023, a series of Wild Wednesdays nature-based activities took place at Bowlees Visitor Centre.

A ‘Campfire cooking’ session began outside Bowlees Visitor Centre where Community Engagement Office, Kerryanne Higgens, explained the activities and the group was divided into two. One group went foraging for herbs in the grounds of the visitor centre with Kerryanne, taking their finds to the campfire to make herbal tea. They also made bread on a stick, cooking it over the campfire and dipping it into homemade raspberry coulis. The children really enjoyed this activity.

I took the other group to gather leaves, and some flowers from the garden, to make art. Using a hammer, the children bashed the leaves and flowers onto wooden discs leaving the imprint of the leaf or flower behind. The two groups then swapped over activities before everyone met around the fire to discuss what had been found and discovered.

The ‘Rivers: above and below’ group met at the visitor centre and the children were given spotter sheets to use on the walk to Gibson’s cave. The aim was to find what is above and below a river, and the children noticed things to check off on their spotter sheet, such as ‘meander’ and ‘boulder’, and stopped to discuss what makes a healthy river along the way.

We stopped to look at Gibson’s cave and then made our way back to the quarry for snack time.

After a demonstration of river dipping by Kerryanne, the children all waded in with their nets to have a go. Lots of interesting types of nymphs were caught but the star of the show was the Cased Caddisfly larvae, which make a cone out of stones, leaves and sand to to hide in.

During ‘Seeds of the summer’ session, the children learned about the work that farmers do with hay meadows. The group were joined by a family on their holiday from Germany and walked to Low Force, chatting and stopping to admire the falls. After crossing the Wynch bridge, one at a time of course, the children collected seeds, focusing on Knapweed and Great Burnet, plants which seed later in the season and normally ripen after hay meadows have been cut. Care was taken to leave some plants and not strip all the seeds and the importance of collecting these seeds, to encourage later seeding plants to thrive, was discussed. The children really enjoyed finding the plants to collect from and doing their bit for nature.

Back at Bowlees wildflower and tree nursery, each child potted up some Great Burnet seeds, using soil and a layer of grit/stones. They labelled their pots, leaving one at the nursery to help with the Tees-Swale: Naturally Connected programme and taking one pot home with them. We were all very entertained by our tame resident Robin, which the children decided to call Ronnie.

Delivered as part of the Tees-Swale: Naturally Connected programme. Tees-Swale is funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and led by the North Pennines AONB Partnership in collaboration with the Yorkshire Dales National Park.