Snow business

Paid work in the outdoors has gone a bit quiet at present.

Field teaching with the RSPB all but ceases in the winter, though we are working on some winter programmes. There is still plenty of fun learning to be had during the colder months. A shift of focus and a change of clothing is all that is required. Schools seem reluctant to schedule visits, however.

I'm still working voluntarily with Bradford Adventure Activities Development Unit on a project to establish an outdoor activities club at a local youth centre.  We found two old plywood canoe kits which we intend to construct and use.  Last weekend we took a walk in Upper Wharfedale, round Trollers Gill. Home of the mythical Barguest.

For myself, I've been getting out on my bike and into local woodland, birdwatching and enjoying the wintery weather.

Highlights have been:

• Watching a peregrine falcon mobbing a plastic owl from the staffroom window at Leeds City College.
• Floodlit white-water kayaking at Bradford and Bingley Canoe Club.
• Seeing a stoat being scolded by a pair of wrens at Timble Ings in the Washburn Valley and 
• Getting out on bikes with my brother in the snow today.

Snowy cycling on Baildon Moor...

...and at Eldwick. Feet very cold by now.

Outlook changeable

So, a bit of an update since my last post.

We spent the October half term in mid Wales staying at the welcoming and rather eccentric Neuadd Arms at Llanwrtyd Wells and at Fforest near Cardigan.  The weather started bright, cold and crisp (the coldest October day for seven years) and we enjoyed the year's first migrant thrushes (redwings) and soaring red kites as we took a walk in the countryside around Llanwrtyd Wells before enjoying beer from the hotel's own micro brewery.

Red kite sculpture at Llantwrtyd Wells

After skittering through icy puddles on mountainbikes at Coed Trallwm we moved to our "glamp site" at Fforest, our drive taking us through spectacular and desolate countryside around the Abergwesyn Pass. Here we paid our money and enjoyed great hospitality, luxurious tented accomodation; egg, toast and muesli for breakfast, Halloween fun and games and deteriorating weather.

Outside our luxurious dome at Fforest

Inside our luxurious dome at Fforest

Free however, was a paddle through the beautiful Teifi gorge to the sea and watching displaying peregrines, sparrowhawks, Canada geese and flocking starlings at the Welsh Wildlife Centre at Teifi Marshes Nature Reserve.  We'll come back to this part of the world.

Me at Poppit sands after my paddle to the sea

Since then work for the RSPB and with a local youth project has kept me busy away from my main employment with Leeds City College.  A highlight was Global Entrepreneurship Week when my friend, Brant Richards of Shedfire and Ragley Bikes visited to coach students with their Education Challenge projects.

Global Entrepreneurship Week

Some wet and muddy mountainbiking, kayak coaching for my canoe club, practice with Upper Wharfedale Fell Rescue Association and making sloe gin has put a spare time smile on my face as we head into winter.

Muddy trails at dusk on my local mountain bike circuit

Sloe gin in preparation for the new year

The biggest grin must go to the prospect of another addition to the Nutton family, however. Very exciting.

12 week scan of our baby