Having thoroughly enjoyed the Stick Man trail during the winter we were keen to try out the new Gruffalo trail. For a change we were at Grizedale forest as we were going to be trying out Go Ape Junior later in the day. We were joined by a friend and her 3 year old to test it out.
We were given the trail leaflet by a friend who had been 2 days before which saved us £2. She had also told us where the trail started so we just headed up the blue trail where we found the start of the information boards.
The first challenge board asked the children to move like the various animals in the story. My daughter duly posed for me stomping like the Gruffalo:
To encourage little legs and keep us on track there were little signs along the way:
For the next board it was using as many of the senses as possible. This is my daughter listening to the bird song:
Further along it was time for Hide and Seek - turns out wearing red jumpers made this quite hard! The forest will be better for hiding in as more leaves come out though:
My daughter then helped our young friend with the next challenge of thinking about where the characters live in the forest:
All too quickly the trail ended with a You did it sign and a chance to do some woodland art:
Someone previously to us had created this lovely owl picture out of twigs and bark:
We made the most of some tree trunks acting as seats to sit and enjoy a picnic whilst enjoying the view on a beautiful day:
Then the children decided that it was time to build a log pile house for the snake, all three of them picked up sticks based upon their size:
In no time at all they had finished their construction:
The walk is not a very long one and there aren't as many activities as for Stick Man. The Forestry Commission have received plenty of feedback after the first few days and are going to add more to the trails. They were already in the process of making sculptures for a few of the forests in time for the Gruffalo birthday party on 7th June. One of these is our more usual forest of Whinlatter so I will definitely go and see it! I will be back to Grizedale again though as its a beautiful spot.
