Broads School C, School Walk 1

This walk took us from the school to South Walsham Broad, and then back again through Fens VillageC water garden.

We were accompanied by the teacher who had also been very involved with planning the route and done the reconnaissance walk to check for health and safety issues and points of interest. This teacher is well known for his intense interest in nature. His classroom walls have photos of birds that he has taken when he has been out walking and his pupils tell us of his love for nature when we do the mapping session. We set out from the school along a grassy track. One girl remarks that she cycles down here and then she chats to her teacher about how difficult the track is. He tells her how impressed he is that she goes down here on her bike.

There is some talk about different bird song they can hear and the teacher mentions that they will pass a spot where barn owls can be spotted. A girl tells us that she has seen one; ‘I seen a barn owl. I was in a car.’ Another responds: ‘My dad saw a little owl, it was on his way back from work.’ The teacher remarks; ‘ I have never seen a Little Owl.’ The first girl interjects; ‘ and we saw a Tawny Owl once on the way back from [school]’.

There is some more discussion about the bird life that can be seen there; “You can see kingfishers down there, my dad saw one” Three of the girls climb on a rotting fallen tree, and start to speculate about why it fell (lightning strike?) and what insects there might be living in the dead tree. However a lot of the attention during the walk is focussed on the horses in the fields alongside, particularly by the girls, two of whom say they ride. They warn us, “Watch out for the fences, they’re electric,” and tell us stories of getting shocks from the fences. They continue walking along, jumping in and out of puddles as they go. ‘When I came down here it was green, all green.’ ‘yes, but when was that?’ ‘It was summer; in the summer.’

They talk about the Broad that we are heading towards. The teacher says: ‘we are not actually going to get right up to it.’ A girl responds: ‘yeah but we will see it won’t we? We will see it. I have been on it. I have been kayaking there. I have kayaked there, and you know right in the middle of the Broad, there is a place you can moor your boat? […] we went there.’ His teacher says: ‘that is cool.’

She continues: ‘you know in the summer? We went swimming in the broads with our friends and stuff.’ Her teacher responds: ‘ Did you? You didn’t get any deadly disease then, with all those rats swimming in the water?’ ‘haha, no!’ she responds.

As they walk along they talk about a park on the other side of Norwich that they have visited. The girl says: ‘At […] Park there is the best climbing tree’. After a bit of chatter about this park the teacher says: ‘have you seen the Giant Sequoias? There are five. You know that is where I got the pine cones from.’ The girl then asks, ‘have you seen the fox?’ the teacher responds: ‘ the fox?’ she says: ‘yeah, they made it out of wood. They did a trail and it all like out of tree stumps and stuff and you have to look for them. I only found two, there is an eagle and the fox.’

We are walking along a tree lined track beside fields here. The evidence of autumn is everywhere, trees have lost their leaves and as we walk we crunch them under our feet and some children are kicking them up into the air.

I then ask them, ‘What do you think about Autumn this year?’ One girl replies: ‘probably more leaves than last year?’ I ask: ‘do you think it was warmer?’ and they respond: ‘yeah, at Halloween it was really warm. Yeah and last year it was cold and raining. Coz after last year me and Emma, we were running… coz we went to the pub for fish and chips and we were running around the garden in T-Shirts. And it was so hot! And there was this boy who was dressed up as a clown. And we were trying to spy on him.’ The conversation meanders on along this vein. It is noteworthy that these children remember this difference in temperature from one year to then next, connecting it to this annual celebration of Halloween, a shared cultural event and to their attire, a way in which they personally experience this change.’ I then ask: ‘so do you think that this change in temperature has had some sort of an impact on the leaves? I mean it is November now, isn’t it?’

They say: ‘well it usually gets cold in October. I really love snow.’ When I ask why she says: ‘because you can build snowmen and it is just fun. And you have snowball fights. And last year when, no not last year, the year before when it was snowing the whole school went out on the field and we had a snowball fight.’ Her friend says: ‘and we had a snowman building competition and we made a caterpillar. And you can go sledging.’ I ask if she thinks they could sledge down the ridge we are walking along. She says yes and goes on to tell a story of when he dad took her and her family to a local place that is a common spot for going sledging. ‘my dad dropped us off and we had to walk back. We had to walk back and it was horrible. So me and my brother took turns being pulled on the sled. But the only reason we walked back was because there was this massive steep hill that no cars really go down there.’ It is clear that this experience has left a strong impression on this young girl.

We can hear a pheasant in the distance. They start out thinking it is a chicken but then we work out that it is a pheasant and they point out that it is a white one.

There is then some talk about hedges. They are remarked on because they are aesthetically pleasing and ‘just really nice’ but also because they are important havens for wildlife. They say that the farmers cut them down because they can’t be bothered to look after them. A girl discusses how her father gets upset by this. She says: ‘if you were to look at a picture of [our village] from like ages ago, it looks so much nicer with the hedges.’ They go on to talk about birds nesting in them. This turns to talk of house martins that nest in one of the girls’ gardens. They talk about how they hear them when they wake up in the morning. The conversation returns to the sledging again and then they talk about the wheat and barley growing in the field beside us and the cattle grid that we are crossing.

At this point the group is quite spread out with some children way ahead and some others struggling a bit in wellie boots that are too small. We have a little stop to look at the map and locate ourselves. As we do this there is talk about the trees, the cows, the field and so on beside our walk. The tree next to us has some fungi growing on it, which they remark on. We are now close to a bigger road and we can hear cars roaring past.

They walk a bit further and then come across a tree stump and they spend a bit of time talking about the tree rings and what can be learned from these. As they walk they talk about watching the BBC programme Autumn Watch. For a moment they go very quiet to try and identify a bird. It turns out to be a robin and they whisper their joy about seeing it. This leads to a conversation about magpies and the popular belief of good luck from seeing 2 of them.

We are about to pass a house called Kingfisher Cottage and the children tell us that this is the oldest cottage in the village. They tell us about how it used to be a mill. And then they talk about the wherries that used to come up the river that we are passing. They are prompted by the teachers to tell us this, but they know the information.

At this point we are looking at a small stream next to a marsh. The teacher discusses what sort of a marsh this is and the in the distance where marsh harriers are. They also talk about a dyke and the teacher asks them what it might be for. They say that they think it is for cutting peat. The teacher explains that it is for draining the land so it can be used for agriculture. The teacher then picks up on the girl’s comment about peat cutting and they talk about the way the broads are believed to have been formed by peat cutting activity long ago. ‘I wish they weren’t man made,’ the girl says. ‘I just prefer to think of it as natural’ – for her the idea that it was manmade spoiled the experience of its beauty.

Here we ask the children how they think the broads will change in the next 100 years. They have a several different ideas. One suggests they might be “More overgrown”; others suggest “They might shrink?” – this leads us to ask why, but the children don’t have a clear explanation, suggesting “evaporation” and that the “water seems lower”. Finally one boy suggests that they “might get built on”.

They spot a heron in the distance. ‘They always look very proud of themselves. The cow is staring at it. If you go up to the dyke they are everywhere, aren’t they?’

Here they stop to stroke a horse who is standing by the fence of the field we are passing and that evidently belongs to one of their friends. They know that the horse is called Teddy. For some children this is a very familiar experience but at least two of the children have never touched a horse before and are very excited by being so close to it. One boy says: ‘please don’t eat me, please don’t eat me.’ While a girl tells him to ‘hold it flat, hold your hand out flat.

We are now walking quite quickly along a road to get to a place where we can enter the Fens VillageC wood and water garden. We are quite late now as the walk has taken much longer than planned. At this stage, many of the children fall behind and some complain of sore feet – it emerges some haven’t broken in their wellies, and that this is the first time they’ve walked in them.

It emerges that very few of the children visit the Fens VillageC wood and water garden regularly; this is because they have to pay to enter. One girl tells us that at Christmas she always comes here with her dad. They throw sticks on the ice and ‘I always lose. I love coming here.’

As we walk through these old woods with moss and ferns everywhere, one boy in particular is keen to point out trees that look like animals: “there’s a pig, there’s a pig – a tree shaped like a pig. Piggy piggy pig”. ‘A Squirrel!’ comes a shout from one of the boys. He then calls out, “Let’s all get on the special seat” (a seat that’s been cut out of a fallen tree) – nearby is a slice of wood, possibly from the cutting of the seat, which the same boy picks up “I’m having that”, then seeing that the wood appears to be the shape of a fox’s head, calls out, “oh look, a fox”. A girl remarks to him, “you’re good at finding the beasts!”, to which he replies “They’re not beasts!”

Two girls spot a duck and start quacking as they walk along, chanting and talking about the ducks and the squirrel they have seen. They also mention a badger hole as they walk by.

There is some algae in the stream here, and one of the boys wellies touches the edge. This leads the girls to chant: “he’s treading algae, algae is poisonous, he is cursed!”

We ask some of the children what the place we’re walking through is: a couple of the girls explain that it was a garden; “Lord Fairhaven’s garden”. The boys further behind the group don’t know this. However, later those same boys remark on two of the trees: “What if that’s a girl tree and that’s a boy tree?” I ask them how old the trees are: “About 500 years?”, and one explains to me that “That’s the king tree and that’s the queen tree. They’ve had to fence it off because people kept taking bits of bark. It’s not a very good fence. I don’t know why they put fences up, there isn’t any point because you can just climb over them.”

After about an hour and a half we are back at school and need to get prepared for the next walk.