Some Wild Ways Well firsts

It was a busy time for Wild Ways Well last week, with three sessions on the go, I can’t really call it hard work with a clean conscience though, it really just meant more chances to be outside!

The first two groups spent their time down in the Glen, having a go at some forest skills and learning about the history of the woodland.  They were two very different sets of people, but I hope everyone came away with the same feeling of love and care for this beautiful, fragile habitat.

It was a bit disappointing on our first visit to see a lot of litter had been left by someone in our wee gathering area but we had brought binbags and litterpickers to clean up after ourselves so we were able to sort that – and fill our Give action at the same time!

Overall these two sessions in the Glen were about having a bit of fun, we made more chocolate bananas and campfire chocolate oranges, learned about building fires, the legend of the Green Man and challenged ourselves to view the world through our other senses by navigating the woodlands without our eyes and using our ears to tune into the sounds around us.  This is one of my favourite activities to do because it really helps people not only to experience the woodland in a new way, but to get a glimpse into the lives of people who don’t have the choice of simply removing a blindfold to restore their sight.

It was a week of firsts, for the first time ever a Wild Ways Well group were able to make a truly edible campfire orange chocolate cake and we also had the first outing of the new Wild Ways Well hammock!  I can see both of these things getting a lot of use in the weeks to come.

The Open Group took on a challenge of a different kind on Thursday, we’ve decided we’re going to try and record all the different types of life that share our section of Seafar woods with us.  We’re going to do this by taking on a variety of citizen science type surveys – which sounds a bit scary but is really just an easy fun way to have a look at the nature around us.  This week we learned how to identify some of the different tree species and walked a line through the woods practicing our skills and recording them.  We’ll do more of this over the year and hopefully get to build up a real picture of the nature and ecosystem that surrounds us.

One of the group members also nearly jumped out of her skin as we came across (by almost standing on them) a couple of Frogs who were feeling the spirit of Spring!  Once we’d recovered we learned a bit about how they breed and helped these two on their way towards water.

After all that we’d definitely earned a mug of hot chocolate made over the fire.  It was nice to get out in some slightly warmer weather – I even had my jacket off for a while though I think I was the only one brave – or daft – enough to go that far!

If you’d like to get involved with Wild Ways Well or join one of our groups you can find more information here

Paul Barclay

Wild Ways Well is a partnership project between The Conservation Volunteers and The Scottish Wildlife Trust, delivered by Cumbernauld Living Landscape and funded by the Green Infrastructure Community Engagement Fund and Transport Scotland.