Meeting people.

It’s hard to believe that May has already been and gone!  There were two Bank Holidays, a week for the Keswick Mountain Festival and a school half-term week so it feels as though I have spent a whole month of engaging with people.  I spent quite a lot of my time outside the Trust shop handing out booklets about the brilliant National Trust project 50 things to do before you're 11 ¾.  So, I have talked to a lot of children and parents about the fun and excitement they can have in the outdoors.  The Trust has now started to add to its list lots of suggestions that have come from children – some of those can be seen here.

I was keeping a tally of the numbers I talked to and it ran into thousands.  It is great to think that many of them will have gone on to enjoy some of the activities in the booklet.  Hopefully they will carry on and do more in future.  Most of the ideas are so simple that they might seem uninteresting to adults but seeing the delight of small children making mud pies or building dens for example dispels that idea very quickly.

Children were also at the heart of another day when I returned with a local school group to Watendlath. This time they did some navigation with a difference.  I had prepared a course where they navigated to six different points.  At each point they used a digital camera to take pictures of things that they found interesting.  

They made their own choices of what to photograph.  It was interesting to see how often their choice differed from what I would have chosen.  And that is as it should be.  This activity was designed to encourage them to look carefully and to explore for themselves.  They took some brilliant photographs.

Daisy here,  

I like saying hello to people but it’s really boring sitting outside the shop.  I’m tied up.  I don’t like it and, although people do stroke me, I’d rather be running around.