Grinton Residential

At the Weekend, ten Year 6 pupils went to Grinton in North Yorkshire for a residential. This was all thanks to the Generation Green Project. We stayed at the Grinton YHA and the weekend was lead by Simon from Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority.

We were blown away by the beautiful location in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales. One of our best activities was lying down in the heather on the moors and being as still and quiet as we could to listen for the natural noises around us. The grouse definitely kept us entertained with their squeaks and chirps and were thriving in this environment. We saw and heard different birds  like the skylarks and owls. Not all the animals we saw were alive and on our adventures we found many carcasses or dead animals. We found this fascinating especially looking at the bones and working out which animal it belonged to.  We took part in lots of activities looking at the plants and foliage around the moors and closely looking at the autumn colours and textures. At night we went bat hunting where we used equipment that could pick up the frequency of the bat’s echo location. If we pointed it up towards the trees we could hear the bats flying around clicking so that they could navigate in the dark to catch the bugs. The next day, we hiked up to an old Lead Mine and got to see in the building where the furnace would have been and how they built the smoke tunnel all the way up the hill side so that the poisonous gases didn’t harm the workers. We found out that it was the children’s jobs to go up the tunnels and scrape lead off of the walls – it must have been awful. We then looked for evidence of lead in the rocks near by and also found fossils and crystals. We decorated some rocks while we were there and brought many of the rocks home with us – sorry parents!

We had such a great time and didn’t want to leave. A big thank you to the Yorkshire Dales National Park, in particular Simon who spent 2 days with us, Grinton Lodge YHA for an amazing place to stay and the Generation Green Project for funding the visit for us. And of course to the staff who gave up their weekend and the children themselves for being amazing during the visit.