I have been back from my travels for a week now, the dust settling on so many inspiring experiences in remarkable countries.  I have spent two months travelling through the Netherlands and the southern half of Norway as part of a Churchill Fellowship to understand how to enable nature connections for older people, particularly those with care needs.  The long journey home via ferry and train gave me chance to reflect on what I had observed about people’s relationship with nature, in a country where nature is a huge presence in every sense. (more…)

*Friluftsliv; a handy word meaning open-air living, capturing the Scandinavian approach to living life in harmony in nature.

In the countryside near Løten, the gently rolling hills are dotted with the red painted barns that are so indicative of the Norwegian landscape.  Crops are sprouting in the fields and a herd of cows with their new calves are munching hay in a farmyard.  This is proper farming country, but I’m on my way to a day care centre for people with dementia.  As I photograph some milk churns at the end of the drive, a taxi full of elderly gentlemen pass me, also on their way to Lillehov, a farm that has provided day care services for over twenty years.  Ingunn Sigstad Moen meets me outside her house to welcome me in. It is a beautiful wooden farm building, full of fascinating old kitchen implements, but the group are already sitting around the table drinking coffee and talking about the day ahead, so I go to join them.  Lillehov doesn’t feel like a care facility, more like a warm friendly home, and that’s because it is. (more…)

*Friluftsliv; a handy word meaning open-air living, capturing the Scandinavian approach to living life in harmony in nature.

How do you imagine your life when you are older?  Perhaps you picture a retirement of travel and adventure, more time devoted to your family or pottering in your garden.  But beyond that, how do you picture your life when you get even older and functional abilities start to decline?  If we are lucky enough to get that far, we know that we may need help with everyday tasks  in the form of professional care.  When that happens to us, I think most of us would hope that we can continue to experience the things we love and that our days will still have meaning.  But if age or illness prevents us from having full agency over our lives, how can we be sure that will happen? (more…)

*Friluftsliv; a handy word meaning open-air living, capturing the Scandinavian approach to living life in harmony in nature.

Its Good Friday and I am sitting next to a campfire in a secluded bay amongst the archipelago of islands off the south-east coast of Norway.  Heldrig, the wooden boat we sailed here on, is moored up, Annita is reading, Sigurd is fishing and Adrian and I are cooking tea while listening to the bird life, our only neighbours in this stunning setting. I feel completely calm, happy and at one with the landscape around me.  I have come to Norway, as part of a Churchill Fellowship to learn more about ‘friluftsliv’ and what we can learn from this Norwegian concept, to enable our older generation to spend more time in nature.  If I wanted to experience friluftsliv for myself, this surely is it.  But what is it, and what can we learn from it? (more…)

*Friluftsliv; a handy word meaning open-air living, capturing the Scandinavian approach to living life in harmony in nature.

It’s a warm spring day and I’m following a group of pensioners on a hike through the forest in Sandvika, near Oslo.  I can hear robins and a nuthatch singing noisily overhead and blue and white wood anenomes are blooming on the forest floor.  I have been invited to join the Demmensturgruppe (dementia walking group) organised by Bærum Frivillgsentral, a volunteering organisation for the local municipality.  Having met in town and dropped off by a minibus taxi at the edge of the woods, the group are putting a good foot down and walking with purpose.  Apart from the occassional pause to look at the flowers, watch running deer or chat to hikers coming the other way, the group keep up a good pace until the official lunch stop outside a hytte (cabin).  There is a large firepit we could use, but its warm today, so not required.  Suitably sustained with coffee, sandwiches and Kwik Lunsj, (like a Kit Kat, its an essential part of the hiking experience in Norway, I am told!), we carry on through the woods and farmland to complete an impressive 6.5k.  Many of the group are living with dementia, others are volunteers.  Its not clear who is who, and everyone is carrying the same branded rucksacks, so we’re all part of one big friendly group. (more…)

*Friluftsliv; a handy word meaning open-air living, capturing the Scandinavian approach to living life in harmony in nature.

The first part of my Churchill Fellowship trip, in which I am seeking to understand how to enable more nature connection for older people, has been spent in Amsterdam, a stop off on my train journey up to Norway. A few months ago, a colleague showed me an magazine article from the National Trust magazine about their Damsons group running from their property Peckover House, inspired by the Odensehuis model.   Described as a meeting place for people living with dementia and their family and carers, group members take an active role in how the group is managed. Odense is in Denmark, but there are Odensehuis across the Netherlands, so I approached a few in Amsterdam to see if I could visit and find out more. I received replies from Maartje and Hans, who work at Odensehuis in two very different parts of the city. (more…)

Get Out More has been delivering accredited forest school training since 2021 and we receive a lot of interest from people who are interested in gaining qualifications in forest school. This blog post aims to answer some of the more frequently asked questions and provide information on the Level 3 Certificate for Forest School Leaders and the Level 2 Award for Forest School Assistants

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Get Out More has been delivering accredited forest school training since 2021 and we receive a lot of interest from people who are interested in gaining qualifications in forest school. This blog post aims to answer some of the more frequently asked questions and provide information on the Level 1 Award in Forest School Ethos and Principles.

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November is a month notorious for consuming, with the often frantic lead-up to Christmas and the chaos that can be Black Friday.  Born in the USA to mark the start of the Christmas shopping season, retailers slash their prices and shoppers can try and grab themselves a bargain, with varying levels of chaos.  In the excitement, we may buy things we might not need, something I am definitely guilty of, to the dismay of my belongings that have sat in drawers or cupboards untouched for a while now!  Whilst the savings can be great, there are hidden disadvantages to Black Friday that we often ignore.

One of the first things to consider is the environmental footprint of the increased amount of purchases, which all need delivering after all. Last year it was estimated that over 100 million transactions were made on Black Friday alone; that is a lot of deliveries!  A rough estimate has placed the amount of carbon emitted caused by Black Friday last year at 386,243 tonnes, equal to that emitted on 215 flights between London and Sydney.

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Walking through the woods this half term, the bright blue of a sweet packet catches my eye amongst the autumnal leaves.  As I start to collect bits and pieces of rubbish lying around it, I notice how much litter is single use plastic; a takeaway tray, a scrunched up water bottle, a crisp packet, a blue vinyl glove.  Before long I had filled a bag full, but it was barely a drop in the ocean of what is there, littering our natural spaces.  Plastic chemicals are leaching into our soil, rivers are polluted by plastic debris and sea birds and marine mammals are choking on the millions of tonnes that end up in our oceans.  The UK generates more plastic waste per person than any other country, apart from the USA – we have to do something about it now.  I have been seriously attempting to reduce my use of plastic since the start of the year, using the waste hierachy triangle as a guide to how I can break my dependence on this finite resource that hangs around forever. (more…)