My time at Juniper Hall

By Rowena

Hello! My name is Rowena. I have been at Juniper Hall for two years now as a tutor. However, now is the end of my time here- I am moving on to new things in the frozen North, at Newcastle University!

It’s going to be so cold.

As part of the tutor team, Juniper Hall has been a fantastic experience. From waking up every morning to this view…

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The cows are back in my front garden for the Summer #moo

A post shared by Jack Starbuck (@thatstarbuck) on May 11, 2017 at 8:20am PDT

I’ve taught some very interesting groups in my time:

• Students that have found the free U2 album on the ipads and played music while recording river measurements
• A-level biologists from London that have played hide-and-seek after class because they’ve never been to the countryside
• “Miss, can woodlice fly? I bet they can.”
• “Miss, is that a cow?” [Points at black & white horse]
• A KS2 group that had to almost run back to centre from Box Hill after a freak thunderstorm, getting drenched by the time we were back (It was actually in Reigate)
• A KS2 student that decided to make “leaf angels” with me (You rock!)
• Every single student that’s sung the Banana song the next morning after a campfire
• My last group that cheered so hard, and climbed on each other’s shoulders (in Bebbington. I feared for their heads)
• All the students that have tried to jump the River Tillingbourne at Crossways, especially those that have failed (especially the ones that failed on camera!)
• The students that have gotten stuck in Pagham Harbour with big muddy smiles
• The students that wanted to spray paint rocks to investigate longshore drift (always a good idea!)
• The KS2 children that made themselves beards out of burrs and stickyweed
• The children that have fallen in the River Mole at the Stepping Stones (or leapt)
• The Real Family Holiday families and children who have all been so curious- those that have climbed the starfish (I fear for you), the amazing red-haired super-mum who pushed a double buggy all the way to the shelter building area, the sweet kids that sat and made apple bird-feeders for hours last year, the huge set of families that made the most incredible shelter I’ve ever seen, that sat about 10 and didn’t leak a drop!
• All the lovely schools that have brightened my days with thank-you letters…

What a lovely surprise from @LingfieldND! Some lovely memories written and drawn about =) pic.twitter.com/DFk0P0uTOE

— Rowena Pattenson (@Syn_Sharptooth) November 15, 2016

It’s been said never to work with children and animals, and yet I’ve spent most days working with both (for better and for worse!)

 

 

 

• Once I found a mole in the River Tillingbourne
• I’ve been headbutted by the goats so many times
• I’ve spray-painted a chicken purple
• A student once just straight-up grabbed a lizard from underneath a log and it was awesome
• The horses at Crossways Farm have chased me around the field about 10 times in the last 2 months
• The students that, instead of picking up an invasive crayfish after they dropped it, jumped on it, then threw it in a tree
• The teacher that allowed me to scare their entire class with a pet stick insect (they all left the room entirely for 10 minutes)
• The school that drove me to Leatherhead Animal Rescue to rehabilitate an exhausted brown long-eared bat and got me in the newspaper!

 

Bat dudebro ❤ (Now rescued) pic.twitter.com/cMueW7fpp2

— Rowena Pattenson (@Syn_Sharptooth) October 11, 2016

I’ve had such a good time while I’ve been here (in all weathers- sun, rain, snow, thunderstorms), with so many incredible memories. Perhaps one day I’ll come back to teach again! After all, I haven’t yet had a pond named after me like Kate (one of our recent Education Assistants).

This is definitely the best spot to teach from

Thanks for all the great memories, Juniper!

Real Family Holidays

By Rowena

We had Real Family Holidays in on the 7th-10th April, one of my favourite times of year! The activities have been great fun, with some returning families from last year. Sunday morning was wild art around the grounds of Juniper Hall, and there were some excellent creations to be seen.

 

There were lots of inventive uses of natural materials collected from around the grounds. A mixture of stones, green leaves, a few flowers and sticks and twigs.

Gather round to enjoy everyone’s creations

There were all sorts of inspirations- the largest art of the day was a giant spider in it’s web on the Templeton lawn…

Bioblitz 2016

By Rowena

For half term, we ran our annual Bioblitz to record all the birds, bugs, plants and anything else on Juniper Hall’s grounds. In the weeks leading up, Daniel’s been busy handing out tons of flyers around Dorking and Leatherhead…

So many leaflets!

Thankfully when the big day came the weather was kind to us! It all kicked off with opening our moth traps, which we had put out the evening before. Unfortunately there were only a few moths inside, as it’s getting to the time when they’re all tucked up and hibernating, but happily a few extras were brought along by the AES to admire as well.

Next we had Lisa and Saoirse open mammal traps in Templeton Woods. There were a couple of successes, with a water shrew, and then some wood mice later on in the ha-ha.

 Drawing quite the crowd

Later on in the lineup we had woodland and meadow invertebrate hunting. We got out the sweep nets, pooters and keys to see what we could find, scooping up grasshoppers, shield bugs, leafhoppers and moths. In the woods we had some fun charming worms too, making them wiggle to the surface to be identified.

Successful bioblitz @FSCJuniperHall today. My fav part earthworm charming :£ pic.twitter.com/W7nPKuFZWF

— Josie McLaren (@josiemclaren) October 24, 2016

The reptile mats didn’t reward any reptiles, but Lisa and a few families did find some hiding mammals and lots of insects- the ants just love colonising underneath the felting we’ve put down in our meadow.

What’s Lisa found?

While Saoirse manned the ponds, looking for underwater critters, Rowena and Helen made some nettle tea with the kelly kettles, that took a lot longer than it should have…

Putting on a brew!

Also throughout the day we had arts and crafts in the students’ common room, colouring moths and glittering invertebrates, and local societies joining us in the Templeton Room to promote bats, birds and bugs!

Art game is strong in the @FSCJuniperHall art room this #bioblitz pic.twitter.com/xQlY1cIA9i

— Rowena Pattenson (@Syn_Sharptooth) October 24, 2016

A big thank you to everyone that visited and helped, and to the lovely charities that attended; the Bat Conservation Trust, Surrey Bird Club, the Amateur Entomological Society and others!

We haven’t got final totals for everything we recorded on the day yet, but we’ll be sure to update once we do know what we managed to find.

Coastal geography development

By Rowena

New specifications are coming for September, and we’ve been very busy putting together brand new days for them…

It’s a long way down to the coast from Juniper Hall, about an hour and a half to Newhaven or Pagham each, so we split it over a couple of days. Coasts is coming back in a big way to geography, so we headed down on Wednesday to update our fieldwork techniques and collect some secondary data (and some pokemon! Newhaven has loads!)

Newhaven is one of those places that seems to be always windy, but the beach is pretty nice when the sun finally comes out. The tide was really far out, so we explored down past a wooden groyne at the end of the beach, and the rockpools below the pebble beach. We also checked out a few information signs about the area for background information- along Seaford these were most helpful, showing a cross-section of the beach defences underneath the beach that’s been built up. Apparently there are 3 different sea walls hidden under there!

Investigating information boards

While we were at Newhaven, we had a go at some beach and cliff profiling, collecting some secondary data for groups to use and compare their own data to in the future. Out with the clinometers and the ranging poles!

Cracking out the ranging poles

After Newhaven, we headed down to Seaford, for both chips on the beach (lunch!), and a look at the terminal groyne. This prevents longshore drift removing all the sediment from the beach (ie, the whole thing).  We measured the beach profile beyond the terminal groyne as well, to give a bit of a comparison to Newhaven- which is in front of the harbour arm, so a little different. Did a spot of bird watching as well- lovely fulmars flying round the cliffs, and cormorants drying their wings on Seaford’s stack.

360 view from Seaford’s terminal groyne

Next we headed off to Birling Gap, famous for its slowly-diminishing number of houses. There are only four left now after they knocked the fifth down a couple of years ago, and it’s a really good example of what happens when there’s no coastal management along a piece of coastline.

We had a quick stop off at Cuckmere Haven on the way back to look at the meanders, before hitting the road to get back to JH for the weekly Stepping Stones quiz!

Juniper Hall’s education team (Missing Denham D:)

30 Days Wild & other exciting things

By Rowena

June is fast approaching (somehow!) and is the month for biodiversity, it seems. This morning I’ve been doing a little bit of research to promote three different fantastic biodiversity projects in June, and made ourselves a board with loads of information and resources for the coming month.

30 Days Wild- All of June

Set up last year, 30 Days Wild is an awesome drive by the Wildlife Trusts to get more people outside and interacting with nature. Individuals can sign up here for a pack, which contains things like a calendar for the month, stickers, a badge, and some ideas of what to do! There are loads of free activities that the Wildlife Trusts are putting on too, which is pretty cool as it means people really have the opportunity to get out and explore.

They also have an app, which you can download for some quick ideas to get outside in nature. I’ve not downloaded it yet (too many other recording apps!) but from a quick glance, it looks pretty fun.

 

National Insect Week- 20-26th June

National Insect Week is a bi-annual event run by the Royal Entomological Society promoting insects. There are tons of events occurring during the week all over the country, which is pretty cool really, as insects are sometimes undervalued- especially the ones that aren’t “pretty”.

The section of NIW’s website I like the best is the Learning Resources area (I guess that says a lot…)- there are loads of activities and things to do; worksheets and things to read, lesson plans, podcasts and websites. Fantastic!

 

Great British Bee Count- 19th May- 30th June

Run by the Friends of the Earth, the Great British Bee Count mostly revolves around an app used to count bees. When I first downloaded it only 10 bees had been counted- now it’s over 18,000! When you spot a bee, you can record it on the app. There are handy pictures too, which makes it easy to work out what you’re looking at. It even has a few non-bees that look like bees (like wasps and bee-flies).

Record all of the bees

You can also do a timed count, watching a 50cm area for 1 minute and recording all the bees that visit the flowers you’re watching.

Putting together all these cool biodiversity projects into one board was a bit of a challenge, and I might have gotten overexcited… But there’s so much to look forward to in June!

So much biodiversity!

Wild Art

By Rowena

Wednesday of Real Family Holidays found us making wild art in Templeton Woods and on the lawn. We started off with nature’s palettes, finding the different colours of spring…

Nature’s palettes

With all the colours of the rainbow found, we took inspiration from Andy Goldsworthy to create our own sculptures using what we could find on the grounds.

Fabulous sculptures on the lawn and in the woods

Beautiful!

Real Family Holidays

By Rowena

This week we have Real Family Holidays, where families can come and stay at Juniper Hall for a few days. We put on events in the mornings and afternoons, with time to explore the countryside inbetween.

Monday morning mammal traps was the first activity we had- Rory helpfully set up 15 mammal traps in the Ha-Ha and Templeton Woods which we went out and found.

Mammal traps

4 shut in each place rewarded us with lots of very bouncy mice and a scampering vole. It was easy to see how the two move differently to avoid different predators- mice jump high so they can’t be heard by owls, whereas voles scurry and hide to avoid being seen by kestrels. We also checked the reptile mats, which had lots more voles hiding underneath, a shrew, a toad and a small slow worm.

In the afternoon, we had fun with bushcraft, learning to use strike sticks and building small fires to boil nettle tea.

Today we have been up to Lodge Hill to build shelters. The sun is beautiful and warm, and some amazing shelters were built by the families staying, using the wood and leaf litter around Box Hill.

Some really inventive shelters!

This evening is campfire, and plans are underway for marshmallows, singing and stories… All of the fun!

Lowland Leader Training

By Rowena

It’s been a really busy week, so I’ve only just managed to get round to writing about this now! Last weekend, from the 26th to the 28th February, Ruth and myself travelled to Orielton Field Centre for three days of training in our Lowland Leader Award. It’s about a 5 hour journey to Orielton by car- to use their tagline, it’s not as far as you think! It wasn’t too bad in all honesty. The worst bit was that we had decided to travel over that morning, so we found ourselves with a 5am wake-up call.

7am at the Severn Bridge

Obviously, the instant we got to Wales it started to rain, but by the time we had got to Orielton (which is in Pembrokeshire), it had amazingly stopped! What was this, a weekend in Wales and no rain?! Somehow, the impossible came true, and we had barely a speckle of rain at all.

After being introduced to the course, the first thing we did was plan our walk for the afternoon with trainer Chris. Tom and Steve had come over from Dale Fort Field Centre (about a 45 minute drive from Orielton) to also attend the course, and knew the area much better than we did, so suggested we went for a 6km walk around Stackpole. There was a picture on the wall of some of the coastline, but it was even more amazing than it looked in a photo.

Barafundle Bay and Stackpole cliffs

Orielton are really lucky to have perfect coastal formations right on their doorstep. It’s very different to the Dorset coastline I got used to living by the sea for a few years. Also fantastic, the birdlife we saw- a kingfisher, goosander and (most excitingly), a pair of chough perched on the clifftops.

Returning to Orielton, we planned our walks for the next couple of days, up in the Preseli Hills. We chose a slightly longer walk for Sunday of 9km, and a walk up the highest hill in Pembrokeshire on Saturday, to the top of Foel Cwmcerwyn. Most of my photos from Saturday are on my camera (perhaps I’ll upload them another time), but I have a few from Sunday, when we went for a walk to Carn Ingli, an old hill fort with spectacular views.

Planning our route

I’ll let the photos speak for themselves, as it was amazing to see. The weather was perfect- very cold, especially being up high, but so clear you could see over to the mountains in north Wales.

Looking towards Newport from Carn Ingli

Steve, font of all knowledge of the area, told us the story of Carn Ingli while we sat in a sheltered spot behind some rocks for a cup of tea before moving on. Who would want to live up so high?!

Carn Ingli

The weekend was really awesome, and I for one learnt a lot about how to plan routes, how to pace a walk and how to use a compass to measure distances. I’ll be putting my new knowledge to use when leading groups out back at Juniper in the future- there was lots of consolidating time on Monday to make sure I knew everything inside out on my 7 hour train journey back to Surrey. Thankfully, I had a spare hour before heading to Pembroke station to run and find a geocache local to Orielton though…

Treasure!!

Spring is coming…

By Rowena

Spring is definitely on its way, and more boxes are getting filled in on the Spring Index sheet in the tutor’s office! I took a walk up Juniper Top last week one evening, and there was so much birdsong in the air. Almost the first bird I spotted was a blackcap, its squeaky sharp call drawing my eye. First one of the year, perched on a branch of a hawthorn. I paused to admire him and the view before heading further up the hill.

Blackcap, image source: british-garden-birds.com

The grass is peppered with yellow meadow ant nests as you walk up, huge grassy knolls that would be teeming with life if you were to peel away the vegetation from the top. Not a wise idea, unless you really like ants! In Ants, by Derek Wragge Morely, Lasius flavus’ nests are called “climbers’ compasses” by the author, as;

“…climbers who are lost in a mist or fog can nearly always establish their compass points by observing the way in which the nests of the Yellow [Meadow] Ant are built.”

The steep side of a nest nearly always faces east- and this is the case on Juniper Top!  Along the path, there was a surprising lack of nests, when there were so many further away.

View to the west

Heading into the woods, the quiet of the open meadow was broken by a thrush, singing from a high-up branch. Another spring tick!

He was overshadowed by a chorus of blackbirds belting out alarm calls as I went further, each surprising the next with their loud chuk-chuk-chuk. A squirrel was surprised too, complaining from the undergrowth as I came to Box Hill viewpoint. It was too late to stop off at the National Trust cafe, so I kept walking down the Burford Spur now, heading back towards Juniper Hall. Dorking was glowing with streetlamps as the light dimmed, the church just about visible along the High Street, a train speeding along the railway tracks towards London. The valley was full of mist hanging low to the ground, Denbies Vineyard and Norbury Park dim outlines. By the time I was back to Juniper Hall, it was dark enough for the goats to have already been put away for bed. A bat zipped across the front lawn as it decided it was nighttime and safe to come out!

Broadwood’s Folly

By Rowena

Big changes have been happening up at Broadwood’s Folly today! Sitting in the office halfway through the morning, we were surprised to see someone scaling the side of the tower, a dark blob halfway up the masonry. Then, what should have perhaps been somewhat more obvious, we spotted the rather large cherry picker rising up out of the woods next to the tower. What was going on? A quick scour of the internet popped up the following result from the National Trust:

We’ve had to make the difficult decision to remove the tree growing through the tower known as Broadwood’s Folly at Box Hill.

We have long known the tree was having a detrimental effect on the tower, but on balance thought the tree within the tower offered our visitors a unique experience.

Read more here

Wow- bit of a surprise from the National Trust there! Over the course of the morning the tower started to change from it’s normal furry outline to one a bit more bare, so at lunchtime three of us decided to take a quick walk up to the top to see how it had changed.

Cherry picker on the move

It was quite evident that the tower is not going to look like it has for the past decade. The tree, a holm oak, was starting to look a bit unwell, so the National Trust have decided to remove it from the tree to save the tower. A look at some of the wood they cut down does show there was some pretty nasty rot going on in parts of the tree, which probably wasn’t helping its health…

Sections of wood cut from the holm oak

Holm oak is an evergreen oak from the Mediterranean region, with leaves that are spiky like holly. Sometimes it’s called holly oak, because of this strange feature. Coming from the Mediterranean, it’s obviously non-native, so probably was dropped by a bird as a seed, and has grown up since. In the heartwood there are amazing radiating lines from the centre, which are much paler than the rest of the wood- which has a lovely pinkish tinge in the very middle. The tower is Grade II listed, so the National Trust have decided to cut the tree so that it is not impacted by the tree. It’s a popular walk from the National Trust visitors’ centre on Box Hill, out to the tower and then back via Happy Valley, so the National Trust want to keep the popularity of this walk by preserving the Folly.

Then and now

It’s not quite the same without the tree growing out the top though! Watch this space for some more pictures when they cut down the tree completely, and we get a very different tower from the one we’ve known…

Jason and Michelle check the tower out