Adventures in the wood.

Last weekend I combined our regional and my local volunteering groups.  These are all very experienced people that I have worked with many times and they always do a phenomenal amount of work.

This time we continued the work in Cockshot Wood behind the theatre.  This is a wood with lots of potential to develop so we are going to create a zone where the children can be excitable and make as much noise as they want without disrupting wildlife or other people.  It’s all part of the National Trust’s big project to show children how much fun they can have outdoors.

We have started to make a wild play trail so this time we were building a balancing beam. We are using timber from one of our other woods that was being thinned as part of the regular forestry work.

     

The result will be 40 metres of beam made by laying out the trees and staking them so that they don’t wobble from side to side.  The beam will become progressively harder as the children move from one end to the other so it will be a challenge (even for adults!) to successfully walk its full length.  This will lead into other activities which will be planned with local school children. 

We were making terrific progress with this when the unpredictable happened and one of the volunteers had an accident that damaged one of his fingers. I phoned for an ambulance and the crew arrived quickly and were as brilliant as ever.

I have spoken to him since then and the damage won’t leave any lasting effect thankfully. It just shows that even with experienced volunteers and taking sensible precautions, accidents can still happen.

Daisy here,

I’ve been playing in the woods with loads of volunteers.  It’s great. Loads of people.  I’m doing really well with my dog training.