Lucy Carter

Firstly, sorry for not writing for ages - I promise to keep you more up to date with my activities in future!

Yesterday I had a fantastic day on a bushcraft training course run by Enric at the London Wildlife Trust.  We spent the day at Camley Street Natural Park to learn about how their youth programme engages teenagers with nature through bushcraft and survival skills.  We learnt knife skills (and I found I quite enjoyed wood whittling!), cooking food on an open fire, and fire lighting.  Here I am having successfully created fire...!

Did you know that a common fungus called King Alfred's Cakes can be used as tinder to light fires?  Here is one glowing and ready to be put with the kindling.

Autumn's a great time to be out looking for fungi and there are loads of 'fungal forays' being run by wildlife groups all over the country.  Have a look on the OPAL calendar of events, or enquire at your local nature reserve to join one.  I went on my first fungal foray last year and it was really good fun (much better than you might imagine...!) so get out there and give it a go.

And now for an elusive member of the museum's OPAL team who hasn't featured on my blog since my very first post. It was Gill Stevens' birthday yesterday (she's the Deputy Director of OPAL) and she got to spend it in the great outdoors - lucky girl.  Here she is (on the left) making the watercress soup...Happy Birthday Gill!