October 2025
- piersclark7
- Oct 31
- 4 min read
The key event this month was the 2-day visit to Aspect Nature Reserve by 120 year 7 (11-12 year olds) from The Gatwick School. The success of the trip is beautifully encapsulated in this photo of two of the young lads (who were attempting to do a bee-waggle dance). It is the happiest photograph I have ever seen, I think.
It was a 2-day trip with many of the children staying overnight for some brave October camping (made all the more courageous as for many it was their first ever camping trip). As the three coaches filled with excited children arrived on site, I found myself questioning quite what it was we had taken on. There had been weeks of preparation work involving neighbours, friends, the Sussex Wildlife Trust, contractors (thanks go to everyone who helped), and now we were about to embark on a 36-hour test where the only goal was every child going home safe and inspired.
With the help of the excellent teachers, we split the children into 4 groups and we rotated them around 4 activities:
Bees and Skulls: We talked about how a bee colony operates, the structure of a bee hive, pollination, etc. The highlight was tasting some local honey (supplied by neighbours Ann and Andy, as our hives are not yet producing). We also reviewed my growing collection of animal skulls and talked about what we could learn from the teeth. It might be a weird obsession, but I am clearly not alone in being fascinated by skulls!
Bulb and Acorn Planting: Prior to the visit, we had carefully painted out on the grass a 15m wide logo of The Gatwick School (a harder task than you might initially think). I had bought 4000 bulbs and the children were tasked with planting the logo with bluebells for the dark blue areas, wood anemones for the light blue areas, and snowdrops in the white areas. It should slowly, marvellously, almost magically, appear early next year.
Woodland Walk: Anna, our site ecologist, took the children on a specially designed scavenger hunt through the woods, exploring dormouse boxes, different fungi, and multiple tree species. As noted in last month’s blog, the woodland has some very boggy areas, which we had pre-warned the children about during our H&S briefing. Of course, this simply meant that the more adventurous were now thoroughly determined to find said bogs. Only one child was successful, which I think is a win.
Den Building: Appealing to a universal primeval urge, we tasked the children with building a den using nothing but the resources available in the woodland. They split themselves into teams and worked tirelessly. We had Bake-Off-esque shouts of ‘You have 30 minutes left’ and, on the second day, I channelled Paul Hollywood (or perhaps Prue Leith!) as I scored each of the dens. Their creations were imaginative and spectacular.
My favourite moment was when we talked about how bees communicate. The children came up with some brilliant suggestions (CHILD: ‘They use a special bee-language.’ ME: ‘And how would that go?’ CHILD (with a withering look that questioned my intelligence): ‘Buzz buzz buzz!’). I explained that bees communicate by doing a special figure-of-eight dance (‘the waggle dance’) and invited the children to demonstrate their own waggle dance.
In the evening, we had a bat talk from Ryan Greaves and Martyn Cooke, followed by a bat walk in the dark. Sadly, it was too cold for any bat activity, but this didn’t dampen enthusiasm.
We closed the day with a big bonfire in the orchard, with S'mores and Hot Chocolate.
The highlight of day two was when our shepherds (Luke and Lydia) visited and gave an entrancing talk about modern farming and shepherding. We positioned the sheep on one side of our Ha-Ha ditch, with the children thoroughly captivated and mesmerised on the other side. I had expected this to be a 30-minute talk, but the questions just kept coming. There was an impishly cheeky question from one boy asking how sheep have sex (which actually isn’t that crazy a question; look at a sheep and it's not that obvious if you didn’t already know). It led to a fascinating discussion not just about how sheep reproduce but also the fact that the ram has an ink-sack on his stomach that marks the bottom of the ewe and this enables the shepherds to know precisely when they were ‘tupped’ and thus when the lambs are due.
We finished the day with an awards ceremony and team photograph in the roundel where the bulbs had been planted (ie, where the Gatwick School logo should, hopefully, appear next spring).
Here's a quick recap video of the 2-day adventure the pupils of The Gatwick School had at Aspect Nature Reserve!
Hope you enjoyed this, see you next month.
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