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Several Parklea Branching Out clients have recently undertaken a Personal Achievement Award with workers from The Literacies Team of Inverclyde Council, Community Learning and Development. In a project that will also be part of achieving a John Muir Discovery Award, they have been discovering and exploring the wildlife to be found within the Parklea gardens and surrounding areas and sharing their research with others by taking photos and working together to produce the information and images which will be used on information boards that will be professionally produced as signs for the organisation. They will provide customers within interesting information about the area and will encourage new visitors as well as showing others the work and talent of the individuals that have contributed.

A group of Parklea clients took part in the organisation's annual pond survey on 28th June 2018 along with Training worker, Robert. They took water samples and checked for purity and PH levels and then, using nets, took samples of the wildlife found within the pond and recorded the range and numbers of pond creatures they found. They used O.P.A.L Citizen Science resources and took then fed into O.P.A.L's national on-line survey and contributed to valuable national research. They made sure no animals were harmed during the survey and everything taken was returned safely to the pond. Some of the group went on to complete an SQA Personal Achievement Awards on Eco-Awareness or Exploring a local area, with support from Inverclyde Council's Community Learning and Development Literacies Team.

Over the past week I have been working alongside one of McGowan Ltd's hand-build pathwork teams in the Arrochar Alps. The path that runs most directly from the village of Arrochar to the summit of Beinn Narnain is, in it's current state, a bit of a mess. Not so much of a path, but rather a line of worn down ground scarred into the landscape up until the scrambling sections nearer the summit. The work being done over the coming months is a 500m stretch of established path with a lot of stone pitching in areas with a particularly steep gradient. The work that I was involved in mostly consisted of building a section of pitching. I spent Monday on the summit of the mountain filling helicopter bags with rocks that would be used later on, but from Tuesday onwards the focus was pathwork. I was given a stretch of ground that had been worn down by footfall, and tasked to build a section of stone pitching that would accommodate hill-users in a more sustainable way. Having built the section of pitching, I reshaped the surrounding ground and planted turfs to begin the process of blending the path in with the surrounding area.

...isn't too bad at all when you get to cycle along the NCN7 and spot various bits of nature as you go! #MoveAndSmileMore #LoveAllLifeAndGetOutdoors #TheGlobalGoals