It comes to something when we've missed two excellent walks in the forest. Dad has been up his "guided walks" stuff again, both at short notice as a favour to the new Committee of the "Friends of Kings Wood", who seem to be plagued by no-show walk leaders.
Unfortunately, on neither was it possible for us to come along, once because it was at in the gathering gloom and Dad didn't want us racing off when he had umpteen small herberts to look out for, once because deer and westies (allegedly) don't mix.
The first was an evening walk for the local "Beavers" (junior cub-scouts)
http://www2.scouts.org.uk/beavers/index.html?gclid=CPOQ5-HDpJYCFQOeFQodK3Gd6w
- the "1st Great Chart". Advertised as a "Night walk" it started at quarter to 6 and the kids were all equipped with torches and those small forehead-mounted miners' lamps, plus the Boss-Beavers had boxes of glow-sticks to give out.
There were 30 children, 20 or so Mums and Dads and 3 leaders (plus Dad and 4 FoKW members). It was a great success, and it was great (says Dad) to look back behind and see a long snake of children with torches winding through the paths, and hear their excited voices. It's quite dark in there by the time we got back to the carpark (19:30) so it must have felt like a real adventure!
3 days later the walks dept was back in action again, this time on the old favourite Deer Dawdle - where Dad stepped in to rescue the day, when Forestry Commission Forest Ranger Steve had to pull out at the last minute.
Dad's been on a few of Steve's walks so can almost do the patter verbatim by now, and knows where the rutting stands are and where to walk to get good views. We even have a skull and antlers for a 6-7 year old Fallow Deer to wave around and show off at the pre-walk intro. The deer performed on cue - roaring and grunting round the stand, and chasing about - even staging an antler-clashing fight off the stand as a side show. It was a great success.
Never mind - we've been promised a forest walk soon to compensate.
Deefski
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1 comment:
It's good to see the paws back in action, thought you had writers block or something, but it was understandable. Silverwood
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