When the weather gets hot and the days are longer my thoughts turn to holidays – lazy days in the sunshine without a care in the world.  But what makes a holiday?  The Oxford English dictionary defines it as ‘an extended period of leisure and recreation, especially one spent away from home‘.  There are two reasons why that’s not happening this month – I haven’t got an extended period of time off because I need to be at home/work.  Get Out More runs activities all year round, but as an outdoor business inevitably more people book us in the spring & summer and the warmer months are often very busy, weekdays and weekends.  After May’s four day extravaganza in Norfolk there was no way I would be able to get away for in June.  So the solution was simple – a microadventure at home.

We consider ourselves lucky to live a beautiful part of the world, a small village just outside Keighley (if you don’t believe me, Google ‘Bronte Country’ and you’ll get the picture).  Living on the side of a hill we have fantastic views and from the field next to our house we can see three counties; West Yorkshire, North Yorkshire and Lancashire.  For future microadventures I want to start from my house and walk to each horizon, but for June the plan was to stay put and enjoy the summer solstice from home.  Friends Chris and Gav came up late in the evening and we watched the sunset as we had a beer or two around a campfire.  Chris’s boys and my girls made the most of the light night with dusk trampolining and playing extended hide and seek type games in the long grass of the field.  We talked about the solstice and made plans to get up at dawn to see the sunrise, perhaps even join the dawn swim at Ilkley lido.  When it finally got dark I created a family nest of sleeping bags and mats in the meadow and we lay down amongst the grass to go to sleep.  It is hugely relaxing to fall sleep to the sound of nighttime wildlife and a gentle breeze.

In equal measure it is troubling to wake up with the drip of raindrops on your face.  I pulled the sleeping bag hood tighter but could hear my eldest stirring.  “Mum, how do you stop your face getting wet?”  “Errm, do you want to go inside, love?”   And the brilliant thing about having holidays at home is that option is always open to you.  A conclusion Chris and family had already come to as I heard to field gate creek open and the sound of a car starting up.  My youngest meanwhile was still fast asleep so I covered us both up with the now spare sleeping back and went back to sleep.  I woke up some time before 6 the next day, having missed the solstice dawn.  It was a grey, dull morning but there was still time to get to the lido for the early morning swim if I got a move on, so what did I do?  Rolled over and went back to sleep of course – I was on holiday after all!

So my night in a field was brief, damp and only a few metres from my own cosy bed.  But a change is as good as a rest and this small change of scene once again helped me to feel more alive and more attuned to nature around us.  As to whether the dictionary would call this a holiday?  Well I prefer the Cambridge English dictionary’s definition ‘a time when someone does not go to work or school but is free to do what they want‘.  By that definition we can have a little bit of holiday in every day, if only we make the most of it.

You can pack a lot into a rucksack and a weekend if you put your mind to it.  Our microadventures so far had all come in well under the 24 hour mark and had not left the boundaries of Yorkshire.  But with a four day pass from my family duties and an arrangement to meet some old friends for a long weekend in Norfolk it looked like this microadventure could finally tip out of the nano zone.

Adrian, Dave, Gav and I have known each other since the days BC (before children) when we would fill our abundant free time with campaigning activities for Leeds Friends of the Earth. We were a pretty resourceful bunch, coming up with eye-catching media stunts to draw attention to saving the planet, and have the photos of us dressed up in various silly costumes to prove it. 20 years later and we’re spread to the four winds and have almost forgotten what free time is but  keep our friendship alive in our once a year weekend reunion of fun and activity that rarely passes without incident. So far we have been narrow boating in Skipton,  tobogganing in Munich, cycling in Herefordshire and surfing in Wales.  Seeking further adventure we had opted for a canoeing and wild camping weekend in Norfolk.

The Bure is a quiet waterway west of the Norfolk Broads, too narrow at the top end for navigable craft. It’s reed filled channel is bordered by fields full of cows, with flint churches and cute red brick cottages peeping from behind the trees. Despite it being a sunny Saturday afternoon we barely saw another soul and did not encounter any other boats on the water, so spent the first day with just ourselves and the wildlife for company. A goose and gander out with their young goslings were alarmed to see a couple of canoes head get towards them and squawked a panicked alarm call to their young charges. The goslings dived under the boats  and we held our breath until they popped out the other side and struggled to swim  back upstream to their flapping parents.  Mayflies struggled on the water surface, snapped up by the occasional rising fish.  Herons flew noiselessly overhead and vocal cuckoos made their presence known in the woods. The pace slowed right down and we soon lulled into a gentle rhythm of paddling and admiring the quintessential English scene gliding by to either side. Long lazy lunches, awkward portages around sluices and weirs and a capsize incident (they said it couldn’t happen on the Bure but we managed it!), meant we were well into the evenings when we reached camp.

Knowing what to pack when you’ve to carry everything for sleeping, eating and keeping warm and dry takes some resourceful thinking. Gav had brought a Kelly Kettle, a self contained device for boiling water using small sticks as fuel. He was keen to test out its set of attachments which enabled us to cook porridge, scramble eggs and toast bread for breakfast. More substantial meals were eaten in the excellent local pubs. After all, resourcefulness is about making the best use of what is available and why survive on camp food when you can enjoy tucking into locally sourced crab and samphire and a pint of Suffolk’s finest?

After two full days canoeing our third night was in a woodland miles from shop or pub. At forest school we acquire all sorts of woodland skills like fire lighting and shelter building – lots of fun but not ones you need every day when we’ve got matches and ovens and houses. But out in the woods those skills became relevant and necessary. With a cracking fire going Adrian set about making a lentil and coconut curry but lamented that that his plastic spork was no good for stirring the dish over the campfire.  With a supply of wood on hand and a knife in my rucksack I offered to make a spatula and set to work whittling  something quickly before the curry stuck to bottom of the pan.  OK, so you might argue that if you can pack a knife, you can pack a wooden spoon, but there was something satisfying about being able to fashion what we needed from the resources at hand.   The only rain of the weekend came in the early hours of our last morning, dripping on our bivvy bags and in huge puddles on the tarp shelter.  Collecting it in pans before it gushed down the back of our necks, provided us with water to wash up from last night’s delicious tea.

Packing up to go I realised I had used every item in my rucksack; bivvy bag, spare clothes, lightweight cooking equipment, pocket knife and cash for eating and drinking out all proved useful.  But good company, ingenuity and a a sense of humour  were the essential resources to pack for a microadventure to remember.

We’d love to know how being part of our work helps you to get out more, so we are launching a photo competition. We want to see you out and about enjoying nature, getting hands on with habitats and breathing in the fresh air. Why not get snapping over the next May bank holiday?

For the chance of winning a place for your child on one of our summer forest schools, simply upload a picture of you and your family as you ‘Get Out More’ using #wegetoutmore to one of our social media channels – Twitter or Facebook  or email them to us at [email protected] *

*The winner will be selected on 8 June from all entries uploaded before 5 June and will win a place on the forest school of their choice, subject to availability.

It was a simple enough idea; pack a bivvy bag, warm fleece and a toothbrush, meet friends in a Dales pub then camp out nearby. What could be more liberating than packing light and camping out underneath the stars?  But like most things it wasn’t that simple.  We took weeks finding a suitable date for a group of us to meet, then on the date we’d finally picked the weather forecasters were giving out for heavy rain.   With childcare plans falling through and the likelihood of sleeping under a downpour some of us were having second thoughts.  In the week before the microadventure it was on, then off, then, after persuading ourselves that it’s not an adventure unless there is some sort of challenge, we committed to do it, and taking the kids too.

So out went packing light and in came the a checklist of sleeping bags, sleeping mats, spare clothes and all the gubbins that goes with going anywhere with children, plus bags full of food and cooking stuff as we weren’t going to be able to eat in the pub.  After faffing about trying to get kit together, a drive up there in drizzling rain, then traipsing across a field laden down with bags on every arm I wondered what had happened to the dream of a spontaneous adventure, and was it all worth it for one night outdoors?

Leaving the pub an hour or so later, the clouds had cleared and the low evening sun was casting a golden light on the dale, highlighting the contrasts in the limestone landscape.  Whether it was the unexpected sunshine, the glorious Yorkshire Dales or the beer, our spirits were lifted.  We were camping on a spot on my sister’s farm where we often go as a family to picnic and swim, but I’d never stayed overnight there, nor slept out without a tent so perhaps more than our first two outings, this classed as the real thing in our Year of Microadventures.

The great thing about camping with fellow forest school practitioners is that everyone knows what to do outdoors.  Wood was gathered, the fire was lit and tea was cooking in a matter of minutes, leaving us to the relaxing business of listening to the birds, toasting haloumi and marshmallows and chatting away about this and that whilst the kids ran around and swung from the trees.  Before long it was time for bed and, after tucking the children up in their cosy tent, I put on several more layers of clothes, unrolled my bivvy bag and  wriggled about trying to get my well padded body and a hot water bottle into a sleeping bag, causing much giggling all round, then lay down on the ground to sleep.  The feeling of being part of that landscape, rather than sealed off from it, was unreal.  The gentle sounds of the night and the vast dome of stars above was like a soothing lullaby and I drifted off to sleep in no time.

They were the same night time sounds and twinkling stars I experienced at 3am, when I woke up freezing, and again at 4am and 5am.  By this time I could see the welcome light of dawn and lay there anticipating the sun coming over the hill to melt the ground frost that coated our bivvy bags.  I rekindled the fire and sat by the river drinking a cup of hot chocolate and feeling the warmth slowly creep back into me.

So this adventure had involved more organising, more children and more kit than I had planned for, I got limited sleep and was frozen to the bone.  Was it worth it? Absolutely.  In a short space of time we had left our familiar surroundings, cooked and slept under the stars, had a laugh, made new friends and felt close up with the sights, sounds and smells of nature.  Not your average Saturday night out.  It may not have been a month surviving on deserted island, (but whose got time for those sort of adventures, Bear Grylls?), but it was an achievable adventure in its own right, which has attracted admiration and ridicule in equal measure, and it left us buzzing.    

We can’t wait to go again and I am looking forward to a weekend of canoeing and wild camping in Norfolk next month – I’ve just to break it to the kids that they’re not coming (woo hoo!)