Into the lion's Den: Little and Large!

Dan's Den, compact and bijou

Difficult to believe that a year has passed since the inaugural  Den building event took place in Clarks Close.  Today was to be the second Den building event and Clarks Close was again chosen to be this year's venue, a good choice too. Mike had already 'swiped' some trails through Clarks Close but more preparation was needed before 'the visitors' arrived for the afternoons den building session. So the first task in the morning was to survey the area where the event would take place for safety reasons, ensure that material would be available for the dens and last years dens, which were still standing, were to be dismantled. The plan then was to continue with tree guard building. As it turned out the Den preparations took up all the morning since there were some loose hanging branches to be removed, a new path needed to be strimmed for safe access to one of the den building areas and more material for the Dens needed to be cut than planned.

Peregrine Symonds Yat, didn't have my telephoto for Sherborne!

I spent my lunch by Sherborne brook and was treated to lots of bird sightings. A low flying Red kite, 2 herons enjoying the plentiful trout, a large buzzard perched on a fence post, a green woodpecker in one of the large Oaks. In addition were half a  dozen Canada geese under pressure from the resident male swan protecting his 9 cygnets all in fine condition with their mother. My luck with bird sightings recently at Symonds Yat  with the juvenile Peregines was clearly holding. Also on show were lots of butterflies with many different varieties including whites, painted ladies, ringlets, meadow browns, small tortoiseshell and more yet to be id'd.

Sky Den, side entrance, room inside for many adults and children !

All too soon the afternoon was upon us so off to Northfield barn car park to meet the children and their guardians with, on my part, a little trepidation. Good news was all attendees were on time with a mixture of 10 adults {grandparents, mums & dads, nannies} and 20 children of a slightly younger age than last year. As before Mike led them off on the 10-15 minute walk to Clarks Close where he then gave an introductory talk on the afternoons activities and off they scattered to begin the work. I followed on in the 4x4 with drinks, tools, forms etc.  The Den building took place in 2 main areas and similar to last year everyone bar the very young {1-3 years} enthusiastically began construction of 6 dens, all very different in size and form. We had a teepee, small lean to, medium sized samples in the main area where most of the younger children were. In the 'new' area was a huge den built by a large team of children with grandparents and mums and  a heavily engineered lean to den with 'seats' built by dad with his 2 sons. It was a tired but happy group of den builders which slowly made their way back to the car park with some happy memories & photos to remind them of a good day out.