Well, if you read our last blog post ‘New Shoots – Spring 2018′, you’ll know that we have been making some gentle changes to our land which we hope will benefit the wildlife that lives and grows around our woodland and provide interesting things for our guests to do (if they wish) whilst here, that are in keeping with our landscape and ethos.
Since we last wrote we’ve had to make some changes to our footpaths as we had a small collapse at the back of one of our old buildings which means that the facade of the building which borders the path running along by the barn is now unstable and until it naturally falls down or we can find a way of bringing it down safely, needs to be fenced off. So, we’ve had to create some new paths that ‘bypass’ the building; hopefully in time, as they are regularly walked, like the neural pathways in our brains, the paths will become more permanently part of the landscape.
We also mentioned our new labyrinth in our last blog; we’ve previously walked labyrinths in various settings made of different materials, stone, light projected, grass; we particularly looked forward to our annual trip to a campsite in scotland that had a walkable labyrinth on an island. Labyrinths are not mazes, there is just one route in and one route out (unless of course you cheat!). They’ve been around in history for thousands of years. We had an area of rough grass that wasn’t terribly interesting so with the help of a lawnmower and some blue rope (and a not so helpful black cat) we set to work; many barrow loads of rocks and wood chip later sourced around the land, and ‘voila’ we have a labyrinth!
Our labyrinth is created from old stones found around our land and is a six circle labyrinth, like life, its a bit bumpy in places with a few twists and turns along on the way; it’s just a short walk to the centre, where you can rest and sit a while if you wish, before retracing your steps to the outside.
Whether just for fun, a time for reflection, meditation or just another way of experiencing our woodland we hope that lots of you will walk it, as, like the new footpaths, the more it is walked the more it will become a permanent part of our landscape and the less likely the grass is likely to grow back over it!….hope to see you there soon!
