Have you ever wondered about the benefits of walking and cycling? I love cycling, but I  don’t often stop to think about it. I do know that I feel calmer, happier and less stressed when cycling to work compared with sitting in my car in traffic jams! Walking and cycling are the perfect way to fit exercise into your daily routine, cheaper than the gym and replacing just one journey a week by active travel (walking or cycling) can reduce personal CO2 emissions and help to tackle the climate crisis.

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For this year’s blog we decided that following on from the COP 26 in October last year in Glasgow that we would focus on environmental actions that we can all take in our every day lives to do our bit towards reducing our impact on the environment. Whether that is increasing biodiversity in our gardens by planting flowers for pollinators, reducing our reliance on single use plastics or making more journeys by bike or on foot to reduce CO2 emissions. Each month we will focus on a different action. To begin the year, we’re starting off with doing our bit to reduce the amount of litter that is polluting the environment. (more…)

“Robin” by pauljeffery59

‘A crow in a crowd is a rook and a rook on its own is a crow’

After many conversations in our house about why the birds weren’t frequenting the bird feeders in our garden, this past week has allowed us to get back on ‘bird track’.  There has been a lot to notice.  Tuesday saw the first visitor to the feeder – a robin.  It was strange to see its cautious movements around the garden before it dared to make a dash for one rushed mouthful of seeds; hardly even stilling its wings before flying off again to the safety of the hedge.

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Conkers to me always symbolise new beginnings. There is a huge horse chestnut tree in the grounds of my children’s school, and every year as the new term starts in September, so begins the daily hunt for any fallen conkers, and the challenge of breaking them open to see how big they are! When the Get Out More team agreed in September last year that our theme of the year would be a tribute to the wonderful Lost Words book, never could we have imagined what lay ahead of us, and how much more important nature would become over the coming months. Suddenly it’s autumn and we are at conker time again. Someone seems to have put the world in fast forward! (more…)

We find ourselves in a very strange time, with the world locking down in the mist of a global pandemic. Robert Macfarlanes book ‘The Lost Words’ is a perfect resource for reminding ourselves of the beauty in the world around us.  In our blog, we are focusing on one word a month and this April, we are featuring the beautiful Lark, a bird resident throughout the UK, with the most beautiful song, which uniquely can be heard whilst it flies high in the sky.  You can find out more about this bird, and hear its song on the RSPB website  (more…)

When is the last time you really looked at a dandelion? Ubiquitous in urban and rural settings alike, you can find them nosily popping out of dry-stone walls, scattered amongst farmers fields and clutching onto pavements lining our town centres.  There aren’t many places untouched by their resilient, yellow faces yet; they are often overlooked completely or pulled out before they take over perfectly mowed garden lawns. Take a closer look, find out a bit more about them and you might just be inclined to welcome the next one to pop up into your garden. (more…)

Cycling along the canal towpath on my commute between Saltaire and Keighley, I leave behind the busy roads and grey tarmac. Instead I start my day immersed in nature with so many opportunities to see many of the ‘lost words’ that Robert Macfarlane has penned in his spell book of nature poems, written to conjure up words that are feared to be disappearing from children’s vocabulary. I am always keeping an eye out for the flash of blue that signals my favourite bird, but am usually lucky enough to spot many more of these lost nature words.

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When we were younger it was such a common sight, we never gave it a name. On winter evenings, we’d leave college and walk down to the bus stop on the Headrow, while starlings gathered in darkening skies above us. We’d look up and notice as thousands of birds swooped and swirled in unison, but never considered it a spectacle. (more…)

“Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August”  Jenny Han

What a summer of magic it has been;  the days were long, the sun shone and we had a full programme of forest school and outdoor play happening across Yorkshire. The long hot summer brought all the generations outdoors to summer events and it was great to meet so many of our existing clients and make new ones at our stand at the Great Yorkshire Show in July.  When our term time programmes in Bradford and Dewsbury came to an end, we switched straight over to the holiday schedule and were busy all summer long with our popular holiday forest schools and community programmes.

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“The grass grew green again and the woods were full of wild flowers”  The Little House on the Prairie

After a long wet winter, the sun came out in early May and it has barely stopped shining since, making our late spring programmes feel like one long summer.  Those muddy sessions of the last 2 blogs seem like a distant memory as we have enjoyed active and lazy days outside in the sunshine.

With our new practitioners Sam and Lizzie in place, the Forest School Play Project began in May, the start of a 3 year programme of outdoor learning and play with young children in inner city Bradford.  (more…)