Last weekend we were lucky to have two enthusiastic families brave the blustery winds on Saturday morning to come and get fairly mucky helping us build some giant anthills.
We are currently in the process of making some areas of natural play throughout the Park, which will include fallen trees to climb, logs to balance on and a rope swing to, well, swing on! But why anthills we hear you ask? Well we decided that it would be nice to provide an area where you can chill out after all that tiresome play, and what better way to chill out and take in the beautiful parkland than sitting on an anthill!
Unfortunately the ants haven’t been creative enough to build us some suitable hills, so we had to build our own. So how do you make a big anthill?
We started by flexing our muscles and shoveled plenty of good soil into a wheelbarrow.
Then we transported it to a suitable anthill spot and tipped it out.
We then made sure each hill was well constructed – patting it down so it is nice and firm – many bottoms will hopefully be sitting on them, and making sure it is a nice anthill shape.
We made a few little beasties homeless – lots of worms of various sizes and the odd beetle, this one was called Dave. We made sure we ticked off the important No.30 on the 50 things to do before you are 11 3/4 – hold a scary beast!
We found all the beasties a new home though – Dave made a swift entry into the new anthill.
We then covered our anthills in turf, so they will make a nice comfortable seat. Then the only thing left to do was to take a picture of our proud workers with their very own anthills.
A massive thanks to the Shaws, the Horlocks and the Thorpes for your hard work and willingness to get muddy!
Calke Abbey 