camp report Family Camp

Young volunteers and their families visit the Wendover to try their hand at making bird nesting boxes, planting wildflower seeds... and ‘Pooh Bingo’...

Wendover Family Canal Camp report

The family camp was originally supposed to have been in Autumn last year, but for a number of reasons it got delayed to April this year which meant my son William was old enough to go. I was planning to take him along and act in the MUP (‘Most Useful Person’ i.e. an old hand helping the leaders) role when one of the original leaders had to drop out. Then, a week before the camp the other leader had to drop out having done something unpleasant to her knee. Following some calls (and a truly heroic number of emails) we decided to continue with the camp with me leading at the accommodation, Alex (yes, the Alex who no longer works for IWA!) running Saturday and John ‘The Hawk’ Hawkins running Sunday with Mikk Bradley in a supporting role organising kit and planning.

We arrived on Friday evening at what was to be our accommodation for the weekend. In a change to normal WRG sleeping arrangements we had beds, rooms (two to a room with far more rooms than we needed), onsite catering, a field for the children to run around and a hall we could use in the evening. Following allocation of rooms we headed off for the evening meal which went down well then we headed to the hall for an evening’s entertainment involving ‘Pooh Bingo’ which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.

Saturday we enjoyed our cooked breakfast then set to with everyone making their lunch before heading to site where we met Mikk and our day visitors with a pickup full of kit includ- ing electric wheelbarrows. Once we had loaded them up we set off down the newly laid towpath to our work location by the footbridge, waving to the Wendover Canal Trust gang working on the relining project [see progress report, pages 34-35] as we went past. Once there, we set up the cookers and started the first task which was to paint the viewing platform with wood preservative; meanwhile some people were working with special tools to remove the various patches of thistle from the grassland to stop them taking it over. After lunch we put a second coat of wood preservative on and Alex led a nature ramble demonstrating his extensive and wide ranging knowledge (can you tell the difference between a native and an invasive ladybird?) only being foxed when asked by one of the children exactly which fungus was growing out of a tree…. Saturday evening we again enjoyed the hospitality at the accommodation (meals cooked for us and no washing up – could get used to this!), the children wore themselves out playing tag and hide & seek (clearly we hadn’t worked them hard enough on site) before we headed into the hall where a game of consequences was held along with various card games and Beetle.

Sunday morning we packed up the kit from the accommodation then after breakfast headed to site. First job was to build some bird houses, we had a number of wooden kits and they were all assembled, some in different ways to others but all ended up structurally sound and fit for use by their potential inhabitants. Following some relocation of the existing boxes to higher up in the trees we nailed up our new boxes. After lunch the final job on site was to plant wildflower seeds, this involved clearing a patch of turf and spreading some seeds out from a pot plus more clearing of thistles. Once we got back to the car park we broke out the brick making kits and used the handy stash of clay that was sat there and the straw bale I had ‘acquired’ to have a go at making bricks and in some cases clay beakers (note to self: for making bricks you only need a very small quantity of straw, and because it is compressed there is a surprisingly large amount of straw in a bale!)

Many thanks to the two Jennys, Mikk, Alex, Wendover Arm Trust, The Hawk and mostly to the campers who definitely went easy on me! I’ll finish with some of the reports that they sent in after they got home:

“As a family we love getting out into nature. The family Canal Camp provided the perfect opportunity to do just that while also caring for the environment. All the volunteering activities were thoroughly enjoyed, from digging up thistles to making bird boxes. The sunny spring weather and plentiful cake and biscuits of course helped keep us going. It was also great to find out more about the wildlife from the knowledgeable people on site. We spotted lots of red kites circling overhead (a rarity in our town) and now know the difference between a bee and a bee fly. We’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who made the weekend possible. We made lots of wonderful family memories and had a fantastic time in the great outdoors. The children are already asking to come back!”

“I wanted to find something bit different to fill a weekend for my family; volunteering came to mind, so I set about searching. So after quite some time I came across the WRG Family Camp and after finding to my surprise that there were still spaces available, booked our tickets and informed my two daughters that there would be no horse- riding for them that weekend! Providing them with a list of activities didn’t do much to convince them it was a good idea, but the date went in our diary regardless. It was a bit of a drive down made worse by the rain, but we arrived in time for the evening meal. The accommodation was basic but more than adequate and only a short drive from the site. Over the two days, we all got stuck in to a variety of tasks, including seed planting, cleaning and painting a viewing platform, making and installing bird boxes with plenty of time for tea breaks and to learn about some of the plants and insects on the site. Overall we all had a great time and it helped that the weather was very kind. The weekend including food, accommodation and activities was excellent value for money and we would very much welcome the opportunity to attend future family camps or other similar volunteering opportunities. My daughters both enjoyed their first canal volunteering experience and gave the weekend a big thumbs up, despite having to miss horse-riding. Although we weren’t actually camping, it was good to have a wide range of adults and children working together. The volunteer organisers were excellent, despite some last minute enforced changes. I’ve been on a number of canal holidays and haven’t really appreciated the considerable work that goes in to maintaining a navigable canal network and the wildlife cor ridors they provide.”

George ‘Bungle’ Eycott