Visit to Ravenscliffe Wood

This afternoon, our group accompanied the Nursery children on a walk to Ravenscliffe Wood. Following a night of rain, there were plenty of splashtastic puddles for the children to jump in, which the Nursery and Year 6 children enjoyed in equal measure.

On entering the woodland, there were many signs of the changing season from the buttery hued leaves adorning the maple trees to the plethora of fungi clinging to gnarled oak branches and stretching up from the forest floor. 

The children soon realised that a tree covered in fungi was not good climbing material. "Look how dry and rotten it is inside the branches!" exclaimed Murad "It would be too dangerous to climb it."

 After finding a strong maple tree that was safe to climb, we continued on through a bank of rusty bracken, before stopping for a hot chocolate break under the gaze of some grazing horses.

Here we found another inviting squelchy puddle in which to splash. In the distance, at the bottom of the embankment, one of the boys spotted a large stone slab jutting out of the earth. "It might be a gravestone, can we go and see?" It turned out not to be a gravestone, but that didn't stop the boys speculating that a ghost may be roaming the woods!


After competing to find the largest acorn, it was time to start heading back towards school. The boys decided to take a rather direct route down a steep slope to the exit path. All was going roaringly until Imath's feet decided to move faster than his body leading to a rather unceremonious dismount at the base of the hill! He soon regained his composure ready for some serious puddle long jump Olympics on the journey home. We returned to school with muddy faces and enough puddle water in our wellies to fill a pond, but itching to return to the woods again soon to continue our forest adventure.