Feed

Walked out to a bothy just north of Pitlochry on a pretty overcast and chilly day. I was rewarded with a brief but quite dramatic appearance by the sun :0)

The Cubs are still working towards their Naturalist Activity Badges and last night they took home a sheet which covers some of the badge requirements. They need to learn about and follow the principles of the Scottish Access Code when outdoors. They also need to be able to recognise a total of twelve different living things from two different groups (birds, trees, mammals etc). We have given them a little bit more of a challenge. They have got the top 10 birds from last years RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch in East Lothian, 6 of the leaves from the trees in our Wild Place and 8 mammals found in and around our Wild Place.

The Cubs picked out Orion in the clear sky last night

Thankfully BBC Weather was totally wrong for Longniddry last night. Instead of the sleet and/or heavy rain we had a clear but cold evening to go Code-breaking orienteering. The Cubs paired up and had to visit ten controls spread around Longniddry Park. At each control was a coded challenge. They had to decipher words from Morse, Semaphone, Braille, Phonetic Alphabet, 'Pigpen' Cipher, Nautical Flags and other codes. After visiting all controls they had to rearrange the words to make a sentence with the clue "It's a long way!". They picked this up pretty quickly and did really as this was pretty tricky. Most came up with the correct answer or were really close THE-JOHN-MUIR WAY-STRETCHES-134 MILES-FROM-HELENSBURGH-IN THE WEST TO-DUNBAR-IN THE EAST

Making repairs to the whittle fence I built for my coppice craft coarse.

Found this bug hotel while leading a nature ramble through the Dean country park.