This photo belongs to Arnos Vale Heritage Trust
Not long ago, I started helping out at our local Brownie Group because my youngest granddaughter, Millie, had finished Rainbows and was a bit nervous of joining the Brownie group because she said that all the girls were much bigger than her and that made her uneasy.
I had been thinking of doing a bit of voluntary work because, now that I'm feeling better, I miss the work that I did at the school and wanted to have a bit more contact with children and their mums. I still know quite a few people from the local school and they recognise me from when I worked there.
Anyway, Millie seems to have settled into Brownies a bit better now, so I think I'll stay on for a bit as a helper because I know that Brown Owl doesn't always have enough people to help.
So why am I writing about the Arnos Vale Cemetery?
This Friday, we were booked to go with the Brownie pack on a wild life excursion. In the past, Arnos Vale became very run down and was closed to the public for years and it became a natural wild life sanctuary.
If you want to read more about this then you can look up the link.
I am only really writing about the outing.
I was surprised that the very day we were due to visit, my granddaughter had been sent home from school with a high temperature and as I was committed to go on the trip to help manage the numbers, I went without Millie.
There were volunteer guides that took us all for walks round the huge cemetery and explained about all the local flora and fauna and the children helped to place traps on animal runs. The traps were not to catch the animals but would help to identify their footprints as they ran over special carbon paper to get the bait. They were being enticed into the traps by hotdog sausages for the hedgehogs and cakes for the mice and voles.
The other animals that were definitely about, were foxes and badgers.
Inside the area was a kind of forest and the birds were all singing loudly and it was hard to imagine that we were right in the heart of our city.
The cemetery was very old and some of the Victorian monuments were extremely showy, tall and interesting. Nature had taken its course, and many of these ancient sculptures and showy grave stones were only held together by thick ivy, so for safety's sake, we all had to stay on the designated paths.
I felt healthily tired by the end of the evening and slept very well that night.
However, I really did enjoy the trip and found it very informative. It is a place that I would never have thought of going by my self. So I'm very pleased that I decided to help out the Brownies.
