Like for so many, Covid was a very tough time for our family. One of the few positives from months of lock down and loss was a unique opportunity to trek like never before and discover local nature on the way.
We are lucky to live in a town in the North Downs, with
countryside opening from the end of our road. We had often gone for walks with
the kids before, but in fits and starts and rarely for more than an hour. That
changed and somewhat.
Early on we decided to insist on a family walk every morning
come what may (I think we only missed two days over all lock downs combined)
and despite not infrequent mini tantrums on the way out the door, this was a
mental health lifesaver. Many mornings were limited to 40-minute walks around
our local arboretum, but even this proved a real eye opener, watching a
landscape change day by day, season by season and learning about its flora and
fauna inhabitants.
Other trips took us around the grounds of our local
university with its concrete, lakes and wildfowl. This proved rather freaky at
the start of lockdown. We had the place to ourselves, except for one or two
rather lost looking, mask wearing Chinese students (this was before many people
in the UK took up the eminently sensible habit). After a couple of months this
though changed as more and more local families discovered the place and the
university discovered a multitude of visitor it would probably never see again.
The best walks were though into the hills and beyond. Starting with 5, then 10, then 15 km treks over our local hill and then in every direction. From the chalk, down into the fields of clay and onto to the sand strewn heath. Through the forests of oak, across farmland and along the meandering river Wey, overhung by weeping willows and flanked by flood plains grazed by muntjac deer and hovered over by kestrels. It was a strange (and necessary) gift from bad times that we got to know our local land and nature so well
Without exaggeration, our children were inspired. Each day
they would write lists of all the animals they had seen, take photos of
anything new and follow up learning about species that particularly took their
fancy. We saw countless deer, raptors, wildfowl and passerine birds. There were
frogs, rabbits, heron, fish and numerous insects and bugs in the air and in the
undergrowth. Highlights included a slow worm crossing the path below our feet
(spotted by Niko), a large stag charging off across the wood and red kites
soaring below our vantage point at the top of a down. This was supplemented by
footage from our garden camera trap, which allowed us to identify each of our
four local foxes.
Having got through the first lock down, we decided to take advantage of any gaps in restrictions to take our nature exploration to the next level, discovering our national parks. It in some ways a sad reflection on me that I had visited more national parks in each of Oceania, Africa, Asia and the Americas than in my own backyard. We did our best to change this, taking our kids to six before the next summer was done. It was eye opening, beautiful, refreshing and needed.
So to remember the good times as well as the tough, I am going to record some of the highlights here.
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