In the Great Fen, we are fortunate to have a wonderful place for families to explore, the beautiful Ramsey Heights nature reserve. Free to visit thanks to the support of our Wildlife Trust members, and open any time, you don’t need to spend anything to have a great day out in the woods. Dress for the weather and ready to get mucky, pick up a Newton’s Trail leaflet from the information hut as you enter and try out some of these extra activities as you follow the route.

Go Wild Tip 1: Build a den! At the Ramsey Heights nature reserve, we have a wonderful den building area where you can put the kids in charge of construction. Use long fallen branches to make walls and roofs, roll thick stumps into place for furniture, build a pretend campfire for your leafy pancakes and enjoy their creativity coming to the fore. Will there be a see-saw, a sink and coat-hooks? How many entrances or windows and are there any booby-traps?! We recommend to our school visitors that ‘if it’s taller than you, it might take two’, so it encourages teamwork and experimentation, learning if a branch can be balanced or dragged with just one pair of little hands. They’ll also love being the boss and instructing you on where to place the next piece!

Go Wild Tip 2: Go Minibeast Hunting! Whilst you’re building your den and rolling over logs, remember to check under and on them for marvellous minibeasts. Roly-poly woodlice, shiny ground-beetles, scurrying centipedes and millipedes all love to hide in the dark and damp soil. Be gentle and ensure any you move get put somewhere safe. If you can bring a magnifying glass, you can get even closer to what makes these creatures so incredible. Remember a ruler and compete to find the longest worm. Bring some paper and pencils and sketch your favourite find. Send us your pictures, we’d love to see them. The Wildlife Watch page has free wildlife spotter sheets to download and print out too. Activities | Wildlife Watch

Go Wild Tip 3: Climb a tree! In our den building areas are some great trees to try climbing too. We recommend not helping children up; If they can get themselves up, then they should be able to get themselves down. Three points of contact always – a hand and two feet, or two hands and one foot – will give them a secure grip. And make sure the branch they’re standing on is thicker than their arm, as a guide to the weight it could take. Discuss what a healthy branch vs. a dead branch looks like, so they know if it’s safe to use. Is it alive with green leaves or bare and dying and likely to crack? What different wildlife will they find in the trees? Will the tree become a pirate ship lookout or a mountain they’ve scaled? They may not get very high on a first try but keep coming back and see how their skill and strength progresses.

Go Wild Tip 4: Make mud cakes! If it’s been raining, it’s a great time to get stuck into the mud. Or if it’s dry, bring an extra bottle of tap water to make your own potions. A couple of plastic bowls and spoons from home can be useful, or even just a stick for stirring and a large leaf to serve on will do. If you’re confident in what’s safe to pick, add garnishes of tree seeds and sprinkles of flower petals. A twiggy birthday candle or three can complete a celebration mud-cake.

Important: Make sure everyone knows what poisonous hemlock looks like as soon you enter the reserve and watch out for stinging nettles and prickly thistles.

Go Wild Tip 5: Pick berries! Safety first of course, so only pick what you are confident is safe to eat. And for the children, reiterate ‘no picking, no licking’ of any plant without checking with an adult first. At Ramsey Heights we have bundles of brambles which will burst with juicy blackberries. Plums are also ripening, already falling to the ground. You may walk through a cloud of red admiral butterflies feasting on the juicy fruits. There are also apple trees here, and elder (elderberries), hawthorn (haws), blackthorn (sloes) and roses (rosehips), all producing fruits that you could cook up at home. Be sure to check for proper preparation advice online.

Go Wild Tip 6: Track wildlife! Best done after some good rain, when animals will have left their footprints in the squelchy mud. Ramsey Height nature reserve is visited by badgers, foxes, deer, water voles, otters, rabbits, and birds. See if you can tell a fox-print apart from a dog by looking for the criss-cross between toes or discover the clear 5-toe and claw print of badgers. If you’re still carrying your ruler from minibeast hunting, you could measure the deer hoofprints to help identify which species it could have been. A muntjac’s will be around 3cm long and 2cm wide whereas a roe deer’s could be 5cm long, 4cm wide.

There will be other clues around too. Listen out for barking deer, feel the softness of bundles of fluffy fur or feathers left behind after a predator’s meal, and spot the different shaped poos they leave behind.

Go Wild Tip 7: Make Nature Art! A crayon and paper can make beautiful bark rubbings. Collect fallen leaves and petals to make into colourful mandala-style designs on the ground. Pack a glue stick, paper and pen and turn leaves into colourful characters. Bring some string to make your own stick man to accompany your adventures.

We hope that’s given you lots of ideas for a fun day out in the woods that needn’t cost anything more than the packed lunch you may bring with you. Get out and play, explore, discover your local wildlife and connect with nature. It’s good for all of us. Our toilet facilities are generally open any time someone is working in the office, and sometimes at weekends. They can’t always be relied up to be open every day so if you want to be sure in advance, give us a call on 01487 815524. 

And if you would prefer to have someone lay on some additional activities, such as pond dipping, sweep netting, owl pellet dissection and crafts, or to help you identify your finds and supervise your adventures, why not check out our family picnic day, Little Bugs pre-school group or other community events coming up in the Great Fen. We look forward to seeing you here very soon!