Building a den in the woods

As some of you know already, I'm a big fan of outdoor play and fresh air, so as the last week of the holidays began, I decided we needed to get one more good fix of both. I've always fancied building a den in the woods, and it was an easy task to convince my 5 year-old that she wanted to do this too. We googled "how to build a den in the woods" and found this fantastic instruction leaflet. It's beautifully designed, in the style of the instruction leaflets for assembling Ikea flat pack, which appealed in all sorts of ways! And it works.

So first we paced around a bit to get the little one to sleep in the pushchair, parked her in the shade, and searched for a suitable tree. We then found a forked branch of the right length to prop up the 'roof beam' and started scavenging in earnest for the branches to make the sides:

We then added more sticks, and grass to plug the gaps (later in the year I reckon bracken would be a good choice), and took the occasional break to swing on nearby branches:

We were spectacularly lucky with the weather, with a beautifully sunny day, and the woods were kind to us, apart from some scratches sustained in the unnecessarily enthusiastic pursuit of some good branches buried in a bramble patch. My five year-old, more usually attired in pink dresses and party shoes, consented to wear sensible mucking-about-in-the-woods clothes and wellies, and announced unprompted, after an hour or so: "I'm really happy, doing this". We both were - it was one of those glorious times when you become completely absorbed in something, so much so that we forgot the time, and ended up spending a couple of hours more than we'd planned there. Luckily, I'd brought water, tea and biscuits, so it didn't matter that we didn't get home for lunch til nearly 3pm!

And here's the den. With a little more time, we might have made it even more impressive, but for a first go, I'm quite proud of it!

The Woodland Trust site has a link to the den building instructions mentioned above, and much more besides - well worth a look.