Exploring and learning while out on outdoor adventures.
There is always a temptation with a nature challenge to think that every day needs to produce something extraordinary. A rare bird. A dramatic landscape. A long walk across the hills. Perhaps an encounter worthy of a wildlife documentary. But that was not really why I decided to take part in 30 Days Wild. For …
Continue reading “Everyday Nature Wildlife Trust 30 Days Wild”
There is a particular moment in a mountain navigation event when you turn away from the line everyone else seems to be following and head off on your own. For a few seconds, doubt creeps in. Have they spotted something you missed? Would it be easier simply to follow? Then you return to the map, …
Continue reading “Two days navigating the Saunders Lakeland Mountain Marathon with my teenage son”
By the time our group gathered at RSPB Old Moor, the official weather warnings had passed, but the heat had not really got the message. It was, in theory, cooler than the day before. In practice, that seemed to mean only a few degrees lower, still close to 30°C, still heavy, still the kind of …
Continue reading “Reeds Above Coal: Finding New Life at Old Moor”
Sometimes the best adventures have to be squeezed into the gaps. The day had already been full of those practical and parenting things that can so easily take over life if you are not careful. Children dropped off and picked up from activities. Homework supported. Bags sorted. Bits of kit checked. All the small logistics …
Continue reading “Bikes, Byways and a Shortest Night Camp: A Father and Son Ride Through Derbyshire”
There is something deeply satisfying about an adventure that begins with public transport, a loaded rucksack and a late afternoon start. No long drive. No circular route designed only to return to the car. Just a line across the map, a campsite in the middle, and a train station waiting somewhere beyond the next day’s …
Sometimes the best adventures start with a very simple plan. Packing a bag, getting the bikes out and ride somewhere for ice cream. In our case my chosen ice cream destination was about 15km away, with a hill in the way, a tangle of Derbyshire lanes to negotiate and just enough unsurfaced track to make …
Continue reading “Derbyshire Gravel Ride: Stone Edge Chimney, Byways and Ice Cream at Rowsley”
Flash Lane, Darley Moor, Matlock22 and 25 May 2026 There are some wildlife encounters that stay with you long after the evening has faded, not just because of what you saw but because of the way the experience unfolded. This was one of those. What began as a slightly tired attempt to join a nightjar …
Continue reading “Nightjars at Flash Lane: A May Evening Wildlife Encounter to Remember”
There was still one section of the Cornish Coast Path left untravelled. Not a huge one in the scale of the South West Coast Path, perhaps, but enough to feel unfinished. This was a stretch of coast I had walked around in fragments, approached from different directions, then written about in different years but not …
Continue reading “Completing Cornwall on the South West Coast Path: Padstow to the Devon Border”
There are worse ways to begin a field trip than being welcomed by a Chiffchaff calling from the car park. That was how our day began at Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s North Cave Wetlands, near Hull. The sun was already bright, the reserve was full of spring life and our group slowly gathered beside the Wild …
There are some places that pull you back not because they are new but because they still have more to give. Pembrokeshire is like that for me. The light, the coast, the mixture of wild weather and calm coves, the old estates and the cliffs, the feeling that a day can hold beach play, birdsong, …
Continue reading “Pembrokeshire Family Holiday with Kids: Beaches, Castles, Walks and Things to Do”