John Muir Certificate Presentation

The group from the Oldham Youth Offending Team that completed their John Muir Award in the summer holidays came back for their certificate presentation. The plan had been to have a walk out onto the moors and have the presentation taking place at the top of Pule Hill, but due to the persistant heavy rain it ended up taking place in the exhibition room!

Despite this, it was great to get the first lot of certificates for the John Muir Award and hopefully there will be more groups in the near future.

Getting Muddy Planting Cottongrass

A number of people from the Adult Services team came and helped us plant cotton grass on White Moss. The weather, for a change, was actually rather good. Despite it starting off a bit misty it soon cleared up and we were working in some nice warm sunshine.












The day wasn't without it's mishaps as we got a welly stuck in the peat, and shortly after having got the boot free then the whole person got stuck in the peat. Luckily, we managed to save him before he sank below the surface.
















As the group was working so hard, all the cotton grass plugs were in the ground by lunchtime, so after lunch we had a walk along the path to look at some cotton grass that had been planted last year and to see how much it had grown. We also looked at how deep the peat was in one of the gullies which everyone found very interesting. Some hard work and a good day out for all!

Heather Seed Collecting with 100 children

We had two days out on the moors with pupils from Marsden Infant and Juniors, and Slaithwaite Juniors collecting heather seeds. The seeds were being collected so that we can sow them - which will happen at the Jazz Festival next weekend - they will be nurtured and then can be planted out on the moors to help with our regeneration.


With about 150 pupils and helpers altogether we managed to collect several tubs full of seeds which is brilliant.

The children seemed to have a good time, bouncing about in the heather, getting a bit dirty and we also found some interesting wildlife. There was this lovely caterpillar, along with some beetles and lots of spiders and spiderwebs.

Digging out the rhodies

A large group from Groundwork Oldham came over to Marsden Moor to help us dig up some of our rhododendrons. We went up to Round Hill, in glorious sunshine, to try to get rid of the ones that have sprouted up around there.

We are trying to get a rhododendron-free moor, as they can rather take over and stop more desirable plants from growing. They are also a non-native species, introduced from the Himalayas in the nineteenth century, so should not naturally be found on the moors here.

With about 25 of us altogether, we spread out over the plot and dug out all the ones we came across, hopefully getting them all. After admiring the views, we dragged our plants back to the vans and everyone was pleased with a good hours' work!

Tyres for Wildlife

We have been trying to make our office a bit more wildlife friendly and to brighten it up a bit too. The Kirklees Youth Offending Team have again been hard at work. This weekend we were recycling tyres that had been taken off the moors after they had been dumped there. Usually we have to pay to have them removed so recycling them is good for the finances too.

We spray painted the tyres in bright colours, and then sprayed on wildlife designs from templates that we had made. The tyres were piled up and then planted with wild flowers. Although the flowers don't look so attractive at the moment, hopefully they will encourage more bees and butterflies in the spring.

Waterbutts and Worms

With thanks to funding from the Kirklees Youth Offending Team, we have been able to spend some money on making our office grounds a bit more attractive, wildlife friendly and a bit more environmentally friendly too.

We have bought a wormery which will help us to compost our small amount of kitchen waste, as well as getting some top quality liquid fertiliser and compost which the plant group will happily use.

We have two new waterbutts which will be great for saving a bit of water, despite there generally being plenty of it in Marsden!

And we have also started to make a herb garden and will soon be making a small wildlife garden, using recyled materials which will hopefully attract a few more butterflies and bees. Some super work being done by the Youth Offending Team!

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.