Monday 1 September 2014

Orienteering, geocaching, bugs and healthy lunchboxes.

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone.

One of the advantages of Bob being home educated is that education can take any form we want it too. Education is about more than the three R's. So today I decided to take Bob off and do some fun education, I decided we were going orienteering. One of the local parks offers this as a self lead activity. So we went along today to find out more about it. I was slightly disappointed that we did not need a compass but rather it was done with a map of the park with circles on the map showing us where the markers were that we were looking for along with a short description too help us find them. So anyway we set off  with our map, two cameras, a GPS machine, a butterfly net, a bug viewer, a juice drink  #CapriSunSchool #CollectiveBias and a snack.

So due to the time that we got there we decided to have lunch first. We had various lunch box  ideas as to what we were going to bring, despite the allergy issues there are many suitable foods out there. As usual Bob's food is wheat/gluten/egg/dairy/nut free. There is no swapping food with him.   We also brought a packet of plain crisps but we are keeping them for snack as we walk round.


Capri Sun




Part of Bob's packed lunch was Capri Sun Fruit Crush which I picked up in my local Tesco. I like Tesco, the aisles are wide, the shelves usually well stocked, the prices good and the variety of product never disappoints, especially with their allergy free range.

At the moment Tesco have a Capri Sun related competition on their website, that involves buying a ten pack of Capri Sun, you can find out more here. Terms and conditions apply.



Capri Sun is a healthy addition to any packed lunch box, whether that be for at school, after school, or family picnics. The cartons are a good size, and each comes complete with a straw for ease of use. Why not pop them into the freezer for a while before you add them to the lunch box? It will help to keep the rest of your lunch cold, but should be drinkable time you need it.

Capri-Sun Fruit Crush 200ml

·         ‘Capri-Sun Fruit Crush is made with 75% Fruit Juice and 25% Spring Water‘
·         ‘Capri-Sun Fruit Crush is 100% compliant with the School Food standards’
·         ‘Every pouch of Capri-Sun Fruit Crush is 1 of your 5 a day’
·         ‘Capri-Sun Fruit Crush is available in 3 delicious flavours: Apple & Blackcurrant, Apple & Pear, Tropical




Having popped our lunch bags back in the car we went off to see if we could find some of the markers we were suppose to be able to find. First off we spotted a vegetable garden with an explanation of why it was there, and how growing vegetables encourages small wildlife to your garden. Bob could recognise the peas, sweetcorn and tomatoes but not the beetroot. 

We headed off in the direction on the map. Bob knew from earlier visits to the park that there is a ruined castle he likes to climb on in that direction so he ran on ahead to climb on the walls and peak through the window.  He spent a good ten minutes balancing his was round the edge of the wall before jumping down and carrying on with our walk. 




Bob looking through the castle remains window. 



.
We could not find the first two markers that we were suppose to be looking for. Not sure if they have maybe been hidden by foliage at this time of year. Decided we would ask when we got back to the visitor centre.

Regardless we were having fun, hunting for beasties and looking for butterflies and picking and eating blackberries, nothing beats a good forage. We only managed to spot one butterfly which surprised me considering the amount of flowering plants around the park.  We managed to catch a few beasties including a dark hard backed beetle with one orange spots on its back. Bob though it was pretty, I thought it was quite ugly, but it was fun to look at in the bug viewer. 




looking at the hardback beetle


We carried on round the park until we came across the Loch. We have never been round this part of the park before so it was new to us. There are two caches round the pond that we have not added to our collection so we followed the GPS and managed to find one of them but the other eluded us,  We could not see any birds on the loch but we did spot a couple of fisherman. Bob wants to come back with granddad and do some fishing here. We spent some time making our way round the edge of the pond looking for beasties on the water or anything we could see in it. We spotted pond skaters, and Bob was taking photographs of them. He used his camera quite a bit, he loves taking pictures and often brings his camera on a day out. 


photographing pond skaters


By now according to Bob's calculations we had walked two hundred miles and it was time for a snack to give him the energy to carry on. The walk way steps near the edge of the pond made a nice handy place to stop for the snack.


Capri Sun #juice drink and crisps 


So we headed back following our map. LOOOOOKKKK we managed to find one of the markers on an old sluice gate. We also found one as we headed over the pretty white bridge, but this one did not match up with any of them on the list we had. Need to ask about this one as well. 


So for all we were not overly successful in the mission we set out to accomplish we did have a lot of fun. We had a brilliant three hours in nice weather wandering round finding things and enjoying each others company. Its nice to get Bob on his own as one on one is fun for both of us. 

Sadly when we got back to the visitor centre it was closed. A notice advised us to go to the Park Ranger but he/she didn't appear to be in the office either.  Will need to ask our questions next time we go back. 




4 comments:

  1. Looks like you both had a fab day :)

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  2. Some lovely one-to-one time with Bob. It sounds like Bob enjoyed his orienteering and exploring the area and bug hunting too. Thanks for linking up and sharing with Country Kids.

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  3. Looks like great fun was had by the pair of you. I failed totally in finding a geocache on holiday in Turkey - either they'd disappeared or there were way too many tourists buzzing around to look !

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  4. As usual, your adventures are a joy to read! Thank you for sharing with us! :)

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