Saturday marked the first of the wildflower walks as part of the array of themed walks on offer organised by Burnley Leisure and Culture and Newground Together’s Great Outdoors Team. Three volunteers and I started from Burnley Youth Theatre and began our walk down Netherwood Road and around the back of Rowley Lake. We stopped often so that I could identify the different wildflowers, trees, grasses, and bushes along the way. We saw a broad variety of wild flowers including, Yellow Rattle, Common Birdsfoot trefoil, bush vetch, Spear Thistle, and common knapweed; grasses like Yorkshire Fog, Crested Dogs Tail, Cocksfoot Grass, and False-Oat grass. The volunteers enjoyed the wildflower walk and we shared ideas along the way all of us coming away from the session having benefitted.   

Each year children from across Lancashire are invited to the SPAR School Games. The School Games is a unique opportunity to motivate and inspire millions of young people across the country to take part in more fun activity that helps young people be active and move more.
This year the offer was a fabulous Party in the Park event, which combined the traditional sport activities and opportunities, with an array of different opportunities for the children to move more outdoors. The event finished with a colour run for all participants.

With the promotion of all things outdoors. This year marked the first year it was held in Burnley, across Thompsons park and Queens Park. Each school had individual scheduled sports sessions that their students were competing in and between these sessions were opportunities for the schools to enrol and try out activities like paddle boarding, yoga, meditation, and park and play.
I ran the park and play sessions where classes would enrol with us to undertake some horticultural activities.

The activities I offered were tree planting, flower arranging, and wildflower ID’ing. Three separate schools enrolled in the activities across the day. I showed them how to safely plant trees. How to identify wildflowers, and how to arrange flowers in pots. All the kids greatly enjoyed the sessions, and I feel they got a lot from it, with one child having enjoyed the session so much she ran back to hug both me and Alexis to say thank you.