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Image taken on one of our nature walks.

Need to find out what the name of this plant is?

Having finished our time working on Craigmore, we have moved onto a new work site, a lower section of the Ben A'an footpath. There is already a path in the section where we are working, however, it is far from accommodating. The steep stretch of machine-built path that is currently in place is becoming less and less pleasant to walk on, and as hill-users deviate off to the sides of it the vegetation has worn away, leaving considerable scarring. This path will eventually be removed and, along with the scarring, blended back into the surrounding environment. The new route that we are currently building will run off to the side, before a short section of stone pitching leads up to where the original path levels out.

The afternoon of gardening.. preserving the plants by watering in a hot hot hot summer. We unearthed the potatoes from the garden and picked gooseberries and black currants from the bushes. Making sure we left some for the birds. The children's faces as some tried gooseberries for the first time. Then we got muddy hands when we made seed bombs to take back home to disperse in the gardens to provide the pollinators a lovely treat next year.

Mission explore time! The children took off into the wild spaces of Ringsfield to discover plants and creatures as if for the first time. Taking with them a napsack of sandwiches, pens and paper to draw, describe and rename what the discovered. Some wonderful ideas and great team work. Some sketched using the charcoal we made in our woodland camps.

The coach droped us of at Dunwich Heath where we could look down from the cliffs and see the whole of minsmere below us, the reed beds stretching out like a beautiful swaying green carpet. On the beach Chris the education manager for Minsmere talked about the bay that had been created by the sea crashing against the shore in storms this coastal erosion is taking up to 5m of cliff a year and depositing shingle back on the beach in some places. We looked for evidence of plant and animal life on the beach and created some land art using the things we had found and shingle and stones.

Today we carried out first aid training, this was important as the activities of the next fortnight will involve the risk of injuries. First aid training can also be useful at any time in life – you never know when it will be needed. We learned the acronym, “DR ABC”: Danger – Checking the scene of the accident for immediate danger. Response – Checking the level of responsiveness. Airways – Making sure that airways are clear and unobstructed. Breathing – Making sure that the casualty is breathing and, if necessary, perform CPR. We used Resusci Anne dolls to practise CPR (among other things). Circulation – Checking for signs of bleeding. We practised applying dressing to each other’s “wounds”. We ended the day by discussing how to deal with various illnesses and conditions that we may run into, such as asthma, diabetes, strokes and heart attacks. Overall, the day was extremely useful to us and we all learned a lot from it.

Our main activity today was to clear a path along the historic famine wall from the invasive plant species [bracken] by hitting it with a stick for around four hours. The job itself was extremely tiring, yet still managed be cathartic, oddly satisfying and a great work out; we had several breaks to make up for the lack of energy. We all had our own section to deal with as we continued to move up the mountain however this quickly blended into large groups swinging sticks around mere feet from each other and sometimes even ‘accidentally’ prodding one another. The task was quite rewarding with minimum risk of being hit by a flailing fellow ranger. Clearing the path is very important in maintaining interesting Irish history as this path runs along a famine wall which was created by impoverished Irish people for little food and money [relief works during the Potato Famine]. When we got to the highest point in our journey we were all separated and were allowed sit back, relax and lie down in the heather. We were given two minutes of silence when we could close our eyes, look at the clouds or look at the Irish countryside below; all of which was extremely rewarding after the tiring work.