30 days wild: days 22-28

Hi there, I will try to keep this a bit briefer as I think you got a bit swamped/bored last week and indeed, only one day has anything particularly much to talk about. Let's just say that my random acts of wildness this week were rather rubbish sadly! I was very busy this week and life definitely got in the way!

Monday:  Setting up a bird feeder in my garden.

I knew that this was something simple I could do that I have wanted to do for a while and 30 days wild was the impetus I needed to make it happen.  Also, the gardening work and pruning and chopping off branches of the gorsey tree in my garden meant I had a handy place to hang a feeder which is visible from my window. I headed off to BM, a cheap store local to my school to buy the feeder- cheap but effective. This was to have consequences later in the week…

Tuesday: unexpected birdlife and geocaching!

Tuesday, I walked home from the station wondering what I could do that was new for my act of wildness as I needed to get back fairly soon. When I reached the park, I decided to go and check out the growth of the wildflowers. The patch near to the Wizard and Dragon is doing very nicely, the poppies are blooming!  I decided to head over to the Scarecrow patch to check their progress and I am so glad I did. 

When I got over there, I was inspecting the flowers and sternly telling off some magpies that were pecking when I saw a friend from church and a peacock.

A random peacock had turned up in the park from who knows where!!?!?!

It nonchalantly wandered around the wildflower patch and then headed behind the hollow storm-damaged tree. 

It was taking this picture that made my glance down at the hollow tree and notice a cool hidey hole, perhaps the exit for the slippery slip in the faraway tree.

And I noticed something purple shining in the dark..

Excitement gripped me, wondering if perhaps I had found a geocache and I gingerly put a hand inside (stupidly expecting a booby-trap!) .

Indeed, it WAS a geocache, a new one, and I was the first finder!

Searching in my bag, I only had a kohl eyeliner pencil to sign the log with but luckily I had a Kinder egg toy car I could put into the geocache!

Alas, I can’t find it online to register my finding of it and the email address doesn’t seem to work!

As I walked back around the lake, I saw the coots had a baby who was learning to swim so I stopped to watch him for a while- he was cheeping in a panicked way!

Leaving the park, I head the dulcet tones of a Chaffinch and spied him on the wire!

That's my long day over!

Wednesday:  Wildness chat

I was in a bit of a hurry and hadn’t managed to prepare any new wildlife spotting tips for Singing assembly so instead, I held a feedback session where they could tell the assembly what wildlife they’d seen.  There were so many keen children. One SEN boy in particular has sought me most days to tell me a new item he has found- it’s become a lovely way we can have conversation!  At the end of the talk, I told them what I’d been up to over the last week as my random acts of wildness and told them about my trip to Hanningfields and then told them about my bird feeder, explaining the importance of maintaining it once you’ve begun it as birds can rely upon you in the winter months.  The beauty of this was that on Friday, one little girl came up to me and told me she’d talked about the bird feeder to her Mum who had agreed to buy one for their garden as she thought it was a lovely idea to have ‘pets who live in the wild’- I like that idea- you’re adopting them by helping them but they are free! 

Oh and dinner made use of some of the radishes from my garden.  Also, a very wild looking dinner- all vegetarian so animal friendly!

Thursday:  Orchids spied!

My act of wildness was an accidental one and lasted only about a minute. Thursday ended up being an incredibly difficult day in the evening so I had no chance to do ANYTHING at all in the evening.  BUT, in the morning, as I left the station, I walked past the Halfords car repair place and noticed that there were wild orchids growing at the edge of their site which were making an escape bid onto the pavement!  I love them and I was so glad they were blooming so rampantly. It was a small thing but it touched my day.

Friday:  snacks in the garden

CBC and I were incredibly tired returning home as neither of us had had any sleep the night before but we decided to sit in the garden and drink tea and eat the chocolate eclairs that CBC had bought us as a treat.  We sipped tea sitting on our reclining chairs that his old flatmate had brought round.

I watered the garden and noticed my neighbour’s roses were blooming.

Our bushy tree in our garden (any idea of name?) is looking lovely at the moment it seems a shame to prune it again. This photo makes me laugh as CBC was falling asleep in the background!

The sky was looking beautiful so I stared up at the clouds and drank tea.

Saturday: a walk along the beach and Swift and swallow watching.

We were in Aldeburgh and walked along the beach. I watched the seagulls swooping around in search of any tasty morsels. I love the sea air, sounds and the peacefulness!

Later in the evening, between concert acts, we walked from the Pumphouse back to town and saw many swifts and swallows swooping here there and everywhere. They are so fast!  This is the best shot I got!

And spied some wild flowers!

Sunday:  Walk on the grassy/marshy paths.

I woke up for the dawn chorus in the field camping and lay awake listening to the birds.

In the morning, on the way back from the shower at the camp-site, I noticed there was a beautiful garden in the middle.

Later, when we went to Snape Maltings for our final two concerts, we took a walk through the marshy lands alongside the Alde and noticed more birds and wild flowers. Simple, but a lovely break between the inside performances.

My week hasn’t been particularly adventurous but at least there has been something every day if not particularly wild!

What about you? Leave a comment if you’ve done anything

!xx

Searching for treasure: the joy of geocaching!

Our first full day in Northumberland began not so well as I had an awful headache which had carried on over a full 24 hours from the previous day. We stayed in bed quite late until WOMOTM  gave me a combo of Codeine and Paracetamol which thankfully did the trick eventually.   I finished up a book that Char sent me, walked through Haltwhistle to the Post Office before meeting up with CBC and his brother WKWTTG to go in search of a Geocache.  A geocache is a bit like a treasure hunt but it’s based on using a GPS signal and some clues to locate a hidden box/item with a log-book and tracking signal and some ‘treasure’ that people who have previously located the geocache have left.   I first heard about these from my brother-in-law at Christmas when we went for a walk along Haltwhistle Burn in search of a Geocache. He had found one and taken a little wooden fellow named Woody almost a year ago and was trying to find a new place to put him. We failed to find the Christmas Cache (there were about a thousand rocks and tree roots to look under).  Today, we headed out towards Allen Banks.  We parked up by the former Staward Station which used to be part of the now-deceased Allendale line (it is now a holiday home) and after one false-start, headed down a very,very overgrown public footpath down towards the Staward Gorge.  I and WKWTTG were wearing shorts so weren’t too fond of this.  As we walked, I thought of adders and broken ankles and had in mind writing this up as one of those Choose your own adventure stories based on which path you take- hey that would be fun- I could create hyperlinks to different blogposts based on what happens next based on your decision. Thankfully for your sake, I am too lazy to do this. If you (reading this),decide to use the idea, please give me acknowledgement.

Using the OS map as guidance, we reached a very, very steep path downwards through woodland. When I get to places like this, I sometimes wonder why I go on these adventurous walks because I really, really hate steep downwards paths, especially through soft, moving matter and if you saw me, you would think I was in my 90’s, not my 30’s.  I grumped and grumped to myself as I descended slowly. CBC burst out laughing when he saw me virtually crawling on my bottom down a path at about 1metre per hour, saying I looked like I needed the loo or had wet myself.  Thanks, kind husband.  Eventually, the path levelled out and became less extreme.  We followed the GPS signal until we reached a stone kiln. A handy-hint from a previous finder of this Geocache had told us we didn't need to climb the kiln.  WKWTTG and I searched the wall carefully as CBC skipped ahead.  CBC triumphantly called out, "Found it!" and produced a Locknlock box.


Inside, we found various weathered items including the Logbook, Geocache instructions and various treasures. WKWTTG logged our finding in the book and we decided to take a Frog-keyring which had come from some Scouts who wanted to be returned to Berkshire which we thought we could do.  Success!  We placed Woody in the box and hid it back where it came from.


Next,we headed down through the woods to the banks of the river Allen.  It was beautiful- stepping stones and fresh flowing water- it was quite shallow due to less rain.  We washed our muddy hands in the river and decided, rather than heading back up again to the footpath, to try and forge our own path along the banks of the Allen.  It was a little precarious with slippy rocks and fallen logs but much more preferable to climbing back up.






We headed onwards, with one or two hilarious- "How am I going to get there?" moments.  One part, we feared we would have to cross the river on some precarious rock stepping stones (not really stepping stones but that's what they'd have to be) due to a massive fallen tree or two on our bank but luckily we managed to clamber through the gaps.

As always, I was bringing up the rear and when I had to clamber  between the two fallen trees, I got stuck by my rucksack to the log above at the same moment as impaling my hand on a thorn with both my feet on the same tiny,slippery foothold. I was in a bit of a panic for the moment as I couldn't move any part of my body without slipping- eventually, standing with feet on top of each other, I climbed out of my rucksack which fell to the ground. I chucked it in front of me and somehow managed to clamber through the gap! Phew!




We reached one point where luck was really on our side. Had it been a wet summer, we would have been totally stuck- rockface on our right- deeper river on the right, but the lack of rain had led to a series of rocky platforms we could walk alongside the gorge rockface.








We came at last to a place where we could climb up to try and reach the path and, according to the GPS, we were near to another Geocache.


Clues and signs including looking for trees that were carved by forestry workers during WW2 about PoWs from the nearby PoW camp and  a tower of sorts. CBC set off further along the path and WKWWTG and I searched all the probable hollows of trees and holes in the stones, natural walls. We searched for a LONG time and frustratingly found nothing.  A ping from the phone told us we were near and a clue told us to look at the base of a yew tree but we weren't sure what that looks like.  I vaguely recalled that Louise told me I was standing by an old Yew tree in a previous blogpost and tried to look for a slightly reddy, spongy tree but apart from that, wasn't sure what to look for.  I saw a sort of conifer-looking  tree which I searched around but to no avail. Finally, CBC returned and we told him the Yew clue.  He headed down below a tree I'd searched around and suddenly called out, "Found it!" and he'd gone right to the base and located another plastic box!  Again, we signed the log book but in this case, as we'd forgotten to bring some alternative treasure to replace, didn't take anything.

It really was time to return to the car so we did just that, via several very grassy fields and slopes.



We noticed that the phone GPS told us that there was another treasure just near where we'd parked the car with the clue, "STOP and enjoy the view"- can you guess where the treasure was hidden?
Once again, WKWTTG and I searched around and then CBC located the treasure. Each Geocache lists its size on the website and this was a 'very tiny' one.  Blimey- yes, it really was that small! I can't believe we found it!!!! There was no treasure but a titchy rolled up log-paper!

It was a relief to get back to the car and go home but what an adventure! We'd had a marvellous time and definitely want to go in search of more Geocaches!

Have you heard of Geocaches? Would you like a go?  It appeals to my inner Famous Five.  Go to www.geocaching.com for more information.  It appears there are LOADS near where I live!!!


xxx