Earlier this year, we made a last minute decision to visit Sale Water Park for the City of Trees Go Wild event. City of Trees are a movement aiming to restore Greater Manchester’s woodlands and generally make Manchester greener through planting trees, and their Go Wild event was aimed at getting kids outside.
Running up to getting married in Coniston earlier this year, we were up in the Lakes for meetings with the hotel on several occasions. After one, much shorter than expected, visit to the venue, we found ourselves with some free time but no walking gear to venture onto the fells with. We decided to make our way to Grasmere to visit Allan Bank, former home to William Wordsworth and Canon Rawnsley (one of the founders of the National Trust)
This September, Rowan started school. Despite being really exciting times for all of us, in all honesty, I also felt quite aggrieved. No longer could I just take a day of work and go off exploring with him. And our Friday adventure days are no more. Rowan really loves school though, and has settled into his routine far quicker than I have. Weekends suddenly seemed really full, with no time to do anything. By the end of September, I had reached the stage where, no matter what, we WERE going to get outside and enjoy being in nature. Beacon Fell, on the edge of the Forest of Bowland, near Preston was to be our destination. Not only is there a sculpture trail to follow, but it is also a dark skies location and I wanted to have a look around before we make our way up for a night time excursion at some point in the future.
On the Saturday before Mother’s Day we opted to do something a bit different to our usual wandering about in the countryside and visited Brockholes, a relatively young nature reserve in Lancashire. Brockholes, which is built on a former quarry, opened its doors to the public in April 2011. It features lakes, wetlands and woodlands, all designed to attract a number of different species of wildlife to the site, to make it their home. Continue reading
Exploring the Landscape 