Cleveland Coast Wildflowers

We started the day with some wildflower identification games – who knew that was even possible. Four drawings and all the children given a flower – stand behind the drawing (a simple enlarged line drawing) that nearest matches your flower – not bad, except when I gave them some plants that weren’t on the drawings. Well that was a lesson – don’t trust the teacher…no wait! it was that sometimes things don’t fit the options given. And we used a magnifying glass to help with the smaller flowers.

Lunch in the park on the bench, although some of us sat on white clover and eventually remembered we’d seen it 10 minutes before; then off towards the sea. The path is steep and slippery and we all learnt that if we keep quiet and concentrate on where we are putting our feet we won’t fall over then will we? And we were good at teamwork…if someone couldn’t manage a near vertical slope we should stop and help, not blame the leader for taking us up a near vertical slope. On the way, we all had to spot a wildflower chosen earlier and were holding tightly. All had them spotted by the time we’d got onto the raised road above the jetty – I was impressed.

Then we went on the hunt for a rare plant that helped witches turn into hares and even to fly. “Is that a real story?” “Yes it’s a real story”. Off we strode onto the raised dunes behind Cattersty Sands. And further and further. “Are we nearly there yet?” Then someone thought they’d found the blue bell-shaped flower we were looking for; but had they? “Okay everyone! behind this drawing or this one; choose NOW!” Clue: One of the drawings was what we were looking for. To cut a long “but are sure you’re sure?” story short…no.

So we walked further into the heat-soaked sand chattering happily away (someone tell me children are silent when they sleep – they must be silent sometimes) when suddenly the whole line erupted into shouts of “I’ve found it!”. Yes, right at the end of the dunes, we walked into masses and masses of Harebells.

Mission accomplished, it was onto the beach for sand-angels and that famous game ‘look my feet have disappeared’ until we turned back towards Skinningrove, some of us unbelievably carrying our own bodyweight in interesting stones we’d found, and walked with weary legs back to the Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum.

A big thank you to all the adult volunteers from the museum who made everything run so smoothly so I could do the fun stuff.