Growing Together at Newlands Corner

Yasmin, our Involvement Lead and four of our members met up in the Discovery Centre at Newlands Corner for ‘Woodland Word Walking’ as part of Surrey Hills Society’s the Growing Together Project.

Previously Coalition members had attended events like bird spotting at Frensham Little Pond and had a tour of West Horsley Place, and come away in high spirits.

This event was to be a little a different and was going to introduce us to an entirely new way to engage with the countryside and nature.

We had a short workshop by poet Rosie-May Jones on Poetry Techniques & Animal Perspectives where we were each given an animal to focus on. Our group had a fallow deer, a hedgehog, an owl and a grey squirrel. We were given some information about our chosen animal and an example of kennings. Kennings are phrases of two words that replace a noun in poetry. For example, one of the kennings we came up with for the hedgehog was ‘spikey ball’.

We also heard about Haiku poems. Haiku is a form of traditional Japanese poetry, renowned for its simple yet hard-hitting style. We were then given the task of coming up with our own Haiku poems whilst walking and wheeling the acorn trail in the wonderful woodland at Newlands Corner. I can’t lie, we were slightly panicked and doubted our ability to come up with anything that would be worthy of hanging on a tree for others to read. However, after a bit of joking and debating on how we could escape without Rosie-May seeing us we put our heads together and came up with a few Haikus!

When we finished the activity, we decided to have a pit stop of tea and cake which was a wonderful end to the day. We all agreed that when we arrived, we were very much out of our comfort zone and laughing that we should read the description of the event in full before signing up in future! However, if we had done that we may not have gone, and we would have missed out on this wonderful experience. So, our message is, keep a look out for future events and give them a try – even if you think they might not be for you! 

You may find that you have skills that you never knew you had. You will also get to truly experience the wonders of the Surrey countryside in a way that is accessible for all.

Growing together is made possible thanks to Surrey Hills Society’s Growing Together project which is supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, we have been able to engage underrepresented communities in the Surrey Hills countryside.