Watch - Forestry Youth Camp 2025
“It was hard to know what to expect really, bringing together a group of young people that I’ve not met before. But actually, I’ve been really pleased and pleasantly surprised at just how much they have engaged. It’s been really beautiful just to see them coming alive in nature.”
“It’s nice to get out, especially if you’re in a really busy area. Camping isn’t really that bad. So, I mean at home, I’m used to like a lot of big sounds or constant moving around. When I’m here, everything is really slow and really relaxed, which is something I kind of really needed as well. So that’s something I’ve realised, it’s much slower and calmer here than in London.”
“So when you’re ID’ing different trees, the main thing you need to essentially look at is the leaf shape. This is the lime tree and these are edible as well.”
“Kwesia is now…I’m responsible for her safety. She’s in a really vulnerable position. Then I’m going to stand back and just let her explore the tree using all of her senses apart from her vision.”
“This is actually one leaf. It looks like it is one, two, three, four, five. That’s actually one leaf. So it’s what we call a compound leaf as opposed to an oak, which is what we call a simple leaf that’s just one piece.”
“I really enjoyed pulling back the outside of the tree after cutting it down because it was really interesting to see what was inside the tree”
“When you see a lot of aspen all together, it’s all the same tree. It’s all connected underground as one individual and they just send up all of these suckers.”
“I think my favourite part is probably the managing and creating fires. It’s really great to be, you know, hands on with a facet of the camp, especially as it’s more involved, everyone benefits from it. And then there’s the responsibility aspect, of making sure there is enough wood in the fire so it’s not smoking too much, or that the fire doesn’t go out and people will end up cold. That’s probably my favourite part.”
“So once you’ve done yours, you’re going to go over to either station, that side or that side, but we need 6 on each side.”
“That’s the wood, see the difference? Outer bark, inner bark, wood.”
“Template on, draw around it. And then we’ll use a saw and a knife to cut into this bit.”
“I knew we were going to be camping. But in terms of what I didn’t expect to happen is I’d have so much fun. Only within five days, I managed to build pretty strong relationships with people, which is really nice. Managed to become friends with people really quickly. I really liked hiking yesterday up on the moors. It was really nice and we got to see the view from way high up. I enjoyed sitting around the fire and just, like, communicating with everyone, getting to know people.”
“I’ve really enjoyed seeing them using tools in the woodland, felling a tree and then carving a butter knife from the tree that they felled. They were really responsible and safe with the tools and made beautiful things and then carved their Mum’s name in and put their own names on and Forestry camp 2025. It was just really, yeah, really beautiful to see them really engaging with that.”
“I think…I really like when the young people ask questions because it shows us how they are thinking about things, thinking about the environment, thinking about what they are looking at…they are looking at things, they are really engaging.”