Stream Dipping at Eastergate

Every Thursday morning in August has seen us Stream Dipping at Eastergate. We have run drop-in sessions for people to come along and discover what is living in the water here. Despite the weather, which wasn't particularly summery for any of the sessions, plenty of people came along, most of them getting very wet!

There were a fair number of different creatures living in the stream, lots of nymphs of various species, water beetles and the odd greater water boatman among other things.

Everyone had a great time getting stuck in trying to find the creatures, and also had a brilliant time splashing about in the water.

And although the weather was a bit damp it didn't put people off their classic British picnics!

Wild Food and Health Walks

Today's Health Walk was Wild Food themed - Yum!! There were 13 of us out for the stroll on a rather nice Wednesday morning. We found plenty of different berries as well as a few different mushrooms. Blackberries and bilberries were found the most, and there were plenty of purple fingers and lips. There were also lots of other berries about and with help from an ID book, people were able to discover what they were and what to do with them.

The next health walk will be on Wednesday 22nd September - come along to our exhibition room for a walk themed on Trees.

John Muir Award

This past week, a small group of us from the Oldham Youth Offending Service have been working towards our John Muir Award - this is what we were doing for the week.

•On the first day when we arrived. We went for a very long walk and did some geocaching (aka treasure hunting) on our walk we stopped to do a couple of sound maps which involves drawing out everything you can hear as a picture

•Second Day - We went up to the hills to do some surveying and navigating to find our way round if we ever got lost in the cloud we were in. the weather wasn’t very good… at all… so we got a bit wet.. Sorry not a bit, a lot!

•On our third day we did some brutal, hard, intense, punishing, tiring work. Which we really enjoyed.. Until Kibby threw a bucket at me! We went out to the moors to plant some cotton grass and then later on we spread 3 tons of heather brash! We also got a bit stuck in the peat!

On our fourth day we went out to the woods and tried to learn some bush craft, while being eaten alive by midges, which was really annoying! We built a shelter and made fire without matches or a lighter.. And we boiled water in a paper cup, amazing isn't it? We caught fish as well, we made a trap out of a single plastic bottle which some how worked. We also did some map reading while waiting for the fish, we learnt how to leave no trace in the countryside, smashing right?

Bilberry picking

A small group of us went up to Binn Moor for an afternoon of bilberry picking. The bilberries were being collected so that we can sow the seeds and nurture our own bilberry plants which we will then plant out on the moors.

Not all of the berries made it in to the buckets and it was clear that they had been enjoyed by the blue mouths and lips at the end, and some very stained fingers.

The rain held off while we were out and everyone enjoyed climbing about on the slopes and hiding in the grass.