Category: Wild Ways Well

Autumn Wellbeing

, by Paul Barclay
  An autumn walk can be a fantastic way to shake off the worries and pressures of daily life. The vibrant colours of the leaves are nature’s gift to us all as they turn and fall in drifts. The trails of reds, browns and yellows marking autumn’s progress always brings out my inner child, I can never resist that secret…

Why every day should be mental health day

, by Paul Barclay
Saturday 10 October was designated World Mental Health Day, a subject that is very close to my heart. Every week Cumbernauld Living Landscape’s Wild Ways Well project runs sessions to help people experience the mental health benefits of nature. There are lots of theories why people benefit from being exposed to nature. Some think it comes from our evolutionary past,…

Go exploring

, by Paul Barclay
Although I’m not a local I’ve been working in Cumbernauld’s parks and wildlife reserves for several years now and I’ve come to know them pretty well. Imagine my surprise last week when I took a slightly different route from normal while I was out walking and came across somewhere completely new! At Cumbernauld Living Landscape one of our aims is…

Wild about wildflowers

, by Paul Barclay
Late summer is a great time to spot wildflowers. Many plants use the time when days are still warm and light is still plentiful to put on their best displays of colour, working in symbiosis with pollinators to create breath-taking sights out in the parks and wildlife reserves. Cumbernauld has many great places to see wildflowers, Ravenswood, Luggiebank and St…

Green at the end of the tunnel

, by Paul Barclay
For most of us the last few weeks have been a stressful time. The long-term effects on people’s mental health is unknowable but it is likely that more of us will suffer the effects of depression, anxiety, low moods and confidence. These effects can be felt by anyone, at any time, no matter how ‘strong’ they may seem to others,…

The Best Laid Plans

, by Paul Barclay
One of the first tasks I undertook when I went back to work in January was to plan out 2020 was for our green mental wellbeing project Wild Ways Well. What new ideas did we have, what sorts of sessions could we run. I was excited for the year ahead working in greenspaces along with the people and communities of…

Window wildlife-watching

, by Cumbernauld LL
Nestled in the middle of an industrial estate, I’m always amazed by how much wildlife there is to see from the Cumbernauld Living Landscape office window. As I type, I’m watching two male bullfinches potter about, their orange-pink bibs unmistakeable against the open green grass. I’ve seen flurries of visiting redwings, prancing young roe deer; and there’s always robins, starlings…

A stroll with the snowdrops

, by Paul Barclay
Cumbernauld Snowdrops, c. Katrina Martin/2020Vision Hope’s Flower, Eve’s Tears, the beautiful Fair Maids of February, the portentous Death Bell or maybe even just simple Dingle Dangles. Whatever you call them, snowdrops have arrived in Cumbernauld’s woods. Legend says that snowdrops were the only flower kind enough to share their colour with the newly made snow and thus became the only…

A new ancient tradition

, by Paul Barclay
We don’t just work to protect greenspaces here at Cumbernauld Living Landscape, we also try to engage with them at a human level, and preserve some of the ways our ancestors would have interacted with the woodlands. Recently the Wild Ways Well group went “Wassailing”. This is an ancient tradition that people believed helped woodlands to come back to life…

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