Last weekend marked this year’s Big Wild Sleepout. A national event hosted by the RSPB, the idea is to sleep outside in natures home and get connected with nature. This could be in your own back garden or for a lucky few, one of the RSPB’s beautiful reserves. We had one here at Frampton Marsh, and this is how it went down.
After settling in and getting all our tents set up and ready, we started with a dream catcher making session with Karl while we waited for our fish and chips to arrive. There were some beautiful dream catchers made, perfect for hanging in the tents for sweet dreams.
After our fish and chips we headed out to explore the reserve, armed with binoculars and bat detectors to see what we could find. We passed herons and had avocets flying overhead, not to mention a spectacular sunset!
We arrived back at camp just as the sun set and the campfire was already set up ready for some marshmallow toasting. We were also in for some treats that night with the international space station flying overhead twice, incredibly bright against the clear night sky. We then managed to get Saturn in the telescope not to mention a few shooting stars!
The next morning we went on a morning stroll up to look over the Wash, before heading back to the visitor centre where Chris had some moth traps we had set the night before, it was like Christmas morning unwrapping the moth traps to see what we had caught. Two of the highlights were a ruby tiger moth and an absolutely massive hawk moth, bigger than some our smaller campers hands!
Now when we promised you that on our Sleepout you’d get close to nature, some of our campers got a lot closer than they had expected when they found this little fella in their tent in the morning!
Then it was time to release the moths, have a few marshmallows for breakfast and pack up our tents. We had a fantastic time and I’m very much looking forward to next year. I would like to thank our campers who made the event a lot of fun and I’d also like to thank our fantastic volunteers who made this event possible. Till next year, when we get to do it again!