Broads School B, Walk 2: Church Dam

This walk that takes place in December in the Winter of 2014 leaves the school and loops back to a road behind it. It is the route that some of the walkers take to come to school every day and they are very excited to be leading us along it. When we get to the place where the pathway joins the road and where we will be going, we pause for a moment to appreciate the view. The teaching assistant, the teacher and all 5 children stop and we discuss the landscape for a while.

When we get off the path one girl (Sally) says: ‘We have just passed the hill, you can climb up there, it is very high though you just grab onto the roots when you climb. It is very wet down here, like swampy. It's squelchy and there has actually become a pathway round the big swamp bit.’ Sally’s awareness of the way that a path has developed over time as people have taken a route that avoids the swamp is indicative of how well these children know this route. Similarly, her description of how you use the roots to get you up high indicates an intimate knowledge of this landscape and how it is traversed.

We are in what might be described as a small valley that has been created by a railway track. On either side there are banks of about 15 feet high and above us the bare branches of trees that have lost their leaves for winter. ‘Wow, snowdrops! Put them on the map, they are very pretty. When this is in summer there are just like little archways of green. These trees when they have all got their leaves it is all very green. It is like a tree tunnel,’ says Sally. It is clear that she is aware of seasonal change and that her walks along this route underpin that awareness.

Chrystal adds: ‘it is not so windy down here, as it would be up there’. This is true, down in this man made valley it is sheltered and we are able to enjoy the cold of the weather without the biting wind which we had endured on the first walk along the riverbank.

I comment on how nice it is to be walking down here and Chrystal says: ‘Well, we come down here on walks to and from school. When we go to school we often go along the top because it is all muddy down here and when it’s um … in the autumn and it all overgrown sometimes there is like stinging nettles everywhere so you can't get through.’ Again this demonstrates the level of in depth knowledge that she has of this landscape, in terms of its physical features, in the shape of the vegetation and the way this vegetation changes with the changing seasons. She is also very proud to be able to talk about this. This sense of pride in their knowledge of the landscape is ubiquitous; even evident in the way that some children respond with chagrin when they discover that they do not know as much as their peers or they find somewhere in their dwelling places that they have not visited before.

As we continue our walk we pass a spot where the daffodils grow in Spring: ‘and there is lots of daffodils in Spring so we pick them and take them home,’ says Sally. One of the boys then tells a story of lady who buried her dog and planted lots of daffodils around it to make the dog happy. They point out the approximate spot where this has happened.

Further along the path, one girl, looking among the trees where some sticks seem to have been deliberately arranged, remarks “looks like there's a den there”. We ask if she makes dens herself, she says that she does, sometimes in her garden and sometimes in the park.

We are coming to the end of the track now and so we stop for a sensory moment. Before we begin Daisy says: ‘ugh I smell cows’. ‘Well, there is a cow field just up there,’ comes the response.

We close our eyes for a minute or so and then I ask them if they found it easy to be quiet and stop thinking like that. Daisy replies that she found it hard because she is ‘just used to thinking a lot.’ These children give some quite lyrical responses when describing the wind in the trees: ‘I could hear the trees a lot, and it comes in like strong currents and slow ones.’ They also talk about how the exercise makes them feel peaceful and alone.

The two boys on the walk who have been very quiet up to now talk about a tree: ’it looks like a massive catapult,’ says one. The other says: ‘A catapult. Let’s call that the catapult tree because it has that, is pretty cool.’ ‘We could tie a piece of string around there and just do it there. We play catapults down here, me and my brother. The other boy goes on to recount how he and his dad used to have a swing down there and he points out a bit of frayed blue rope where it was attached to a tree.

We have now left the ‘valley’ and are walking along the side of a drainage ditch. Here the two girls tell about coming for walks with their toy prams and dolls and how once one of the prams ended up in the river (‘We know it is not a river but we call it that anyway,’ they add). They also talk about the swans that are always there. ‘When you see one you know that other will be nearby’.

We walk a little further along the road past the local zoo which elicits the following discussion. ‘It is closed now because it is too cold for the animals. My sister likes it there,’. Then Chrystal says: ‘Your grandad used to own it didn't he?’ and Mary responds: ‘Yeah, my mom and dad worked there from 16. They called it Pettits Feathercraft because they made everything really out of feathers.’ Chrystal asks: ‘So they like done art work and sculptures and things?’ Mary says: ‘Yeah, my mom has got a picture somewhere in the loft where she done like a picture of an owl made out of feathers. And sometimes the peacock that goes there, they sometimes leave feathers around so they used to use those too so they would have like really colourful pictures. And my grandad that used to work in the gift shop and they had like a ‘pick and mix’ and whenever no one was looking he would grab some and hide them under the desk and eat them.’ This latter story was told with glee and excitement, the thought of her grandad’s mischievous behaviour clearly gave her great joy. Next we come to a church where a discussion about an archaeological dig that took place at the school with the Time Team took place.

‘So what is this about a dig?’ we ask. One boy responds: ‘Yeah we did one on our school field where we found the posts of Saxon round houses and then we did a dig here and we thought we found a roman site here and we think there were roman bars here.’ They are very excited by this event and this is borne out the by teachers’ accounts of it too. It seems to have had quite an impact, at least in the school if not in the local community too.

A little further on from the church Sally and Chrystal talk about a walk that they do quite regularly with their dog. Sally says: ‘We are coming off the edge of the field and onto the road, we are going to walk around the corner and up over the hill. So round this clump of trees there is a little lakey thing.’ Chrystal says: ‘There is a pathway, it takes about half an hour and me and Sally often take Monty [our dog] there because um it is very muddy there we take our wellies and just go down there for a walk instead of going way away.’ Another girl says she comes up and down here a lot ‘blackberrying’.

When asked, Sally and her friends also spends some time talking about how things will be different in 100 years’ time. Chrystal says: ‘It will be pretty overgrown’. Sally says ‘ … not very well used, because everything would be overgrown and nobody would be able to get through and nobody would be bothered to care for it or anything.’ When I ask why she thinks people will care less she says: ‘Well because of all the technology and we have got more advanced I don't think anyone will be bothered to come down here anymore. Because they will be spending all of their time on electronics and stuff.’ She tells of her brother who has ‘like five computers in his room and he never comes out.’

We are now on the final leg of our journey, walking around Church Road to Mill Road; there's a drainage ditch here and the children comment on the algae in the water: “it's like a scaly thing had slid down into the water there”. We ask what they know about the ditches: “they dig a hole and it drains out water and helps it not to flood”. They also know about drainage mills which “push the water out into the ditches”.

We walk past a field of cows that elicits some detailed knowledge about the animals, including their names and how many calves they have had in recent years.

We also pass some allotments and are told that the school had tried to get one but the community had not allowed them to have one. This is common knowledge amongst the group and suggests a bit of a divide between the school community and the local community.

We then make our way quite quickly back, as it is now lunchtime, and the children comment hungrily on the smell of chips from the chip shop as we get close to the school.