Island 2000 Trust Blog

Last Saturday the Edcom Team spent the day at Newport Primary School with 70 of the Island’s brightest young people for the Gifted and Talented Engineering day.  Individual schools around the Island selected promising pupils to attend the full day session which was being run by Danny and Kev.  The challenge for the day was to design and build a bridge across the Medina to replace the floating bridge.  The children had to take into consideration passing ship traffic, tidal levels and the load placed on the bridge.

Danny and Kev were very impressed by the innovation and creativity demonstrated throughout the day, and are looking forward taking part in future Gifted and Talented workshops.

The Edcom team have been busy recently running workshops in schools as part of the Medina Rediscovered project.  The giant landmark art is one of our most popular activities.  Getting a class of children into the hall and spreading out around a drawing of the River Medina to draw in all its associated landmarks is an absorbing way to spend an afternoon.

My son came running in to fetch me this morning telling me that a bird had crashed into the window.  When I arrived in the room, the bird’s impression could be clearly seen on the glass.  It was a pigeon (I could tell by the dead pigeon in my front garden), and it was being chased by a small bird of prey: a kestrel or more likely, a sparrowhawk, when it crashed.

Couldn’t finish the summer without giving our red squirrel a mention.  Thanks to the series of Really Wild Fridays at Robin Hill, our furry friend had a weekly outing during the summer holidays amd made lots of new friends.

To celebrate the successful completion of the first stage of the Pan Growing Spaces Project, Medina Housing Association and Island 2000 in association with several Pan community groups staged an end of season Pan Garden Show.

The show included a plants and seeds stall, a veg swap table, a bouncy castle, bug hunt and face painting for the children, recipe ideas and gardening advice, plus cream teas and home-made vegetable soup.  And it wouldn’t have been a garden show without a bit of competition, and the the entries came pouring in from local residents keen to show off the results of their labours at their raised beds.  Who could resist the chance to compete in categories such as ugliest veg, rudest veg, pimp your produce and vegetable most like its owner.  My favourite entry was this pair of carrots pimped up as Jordan and Peter Andre.

Finally, the afternoon wouldn’t have been complete without a visit from the giant Pan carrot, usually to be seen roaming the allotments at dusk looking for carrot company, but taking a rare daylight outing lured by the scent of a table full of home-grown.

The  team have been doing a wonderful job at Robin Hill throughout August running Really Wild Fridays. One of the events on offer is a minibeast hunt followed by a look at all the fab things collected under a microscope (actually a USB plug-in through a laptop and then projected onto a big screen for all to see - very effective). The bugs are caught using sweep nest and then safely collected up in pooters ( pots with straws in and out for sucking up insects - just make sure you use the right straw). In the close quarters and confines of the pooter pot however all manner of carnage can ensue which of course only makes the spectacle the more fascinating! Here you can see a voracious Damsel Bug about to puncture a  spider with its wicked-looking rostrum: a stabbing, hollow beak for sucking out insides. Yummy.

This summer the Education and Community Team have been let loose in RobinHill every Friday, leading the Really Wild Friday events at Robin Hill. Robin Hill is a very poular tourist attraction set in 88 acres of beautiful Island woodland, and we laid on a host of fun and free activities throughout the day. The most popular activity was a Wilderness Survival session at the gipsy camp in the woods for all budding Ray Mears. We provided tarpaulins and string for family groups to create their own bivouacs using the natural materials

found in the woods.

Families threw themselves into this activity with gusto, and over the summer we saw some brilliant and innovative structures being created. After finishing their shelters Danny held a fire lighting workshop, demonstrating different ways of lighting fire without using matches. Each family group was then given a fire lighting kit to try and get their own fire going. Groups with successful fires were rewarded with a round of marshmallows to toast.

We also ran “hands-on with nature” arts and crafts down at the Really Wild Stage, making magic woodland wands

, dream catchers and paper kites, using a mixture of natural, recycled and scrap store materials.

As the finishing touch to the improvements on the Lukely Brook at St Cross Mill in Newport, the Newport Rivers Group have commissioned and installed a decorative kingfisher perch.

Before the in-channel improvements, kingfishers were regularly seen on this stretch of the river, but during the recent works all debris was removed from the channel.

The Newport Rivers Group commissioned local artist Dave Badman to design and install this unique and beautiful reedmace sculpture which will also act as a resting perch for kinfishers.

The sculpture can be seen adjacent to Halfords car park in Newport.

The Education and Community team have been busy installing raised beds in gardens on Pan Estate.  A joint project with Medina Housing Association is encouraging residents to “grow their own” by providing a raised bed, soil, vegetable seeds and a tool kit for up to 50 households in the ward.  Most of the beds are now installed and ready to be planted up for the growing season, and Island 2000 will be holding a series of drop-in sessions throughout the summer offering advice on gardening using raised beds and suggesting recipes that will use produce from the garden.

Ray and his raised bed

A raised bed frame takes shape

I had the great privilege of joining in with Professor Boffin’s walking festival walk around Cowes and East Cowes “The Queen’s Bloomers” on Sunday. What a great walk! If he manages the trip across the Solent to present it again next year I would heartily recommend it. The YouTube video below gives a small taste of the days fun.