Boggarts at Longshaw!

A Day of Boggarts

What day? Sunday February 17th 2013

When?

Session 1: 10.30 - 12.30 (needs booking - meeting at the Moorland Discovery Centre, Longshaw) 

Session 2: 1.30 - 3.30pm (no booking needed - meet at the Visitor Centre)

Where? Longshaw Estate, National Trust

Getting there: http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/longshaw/

Useful link: http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/longshaw/things-to-see-and-do/events/

Cost and booking

morning: price: Adult £8, Child £5 cost includes activities, soup & a roll. Booking Essential (through the Trust - use the link above)

afternoon: activities are free but car parking charges may apply (no booking needed)

Exploring with Stories here will join the bigger event at Longshaw marking the opening of their Boggart* Play Trail. Exploring with Stories will be on hand to tell some Boggart Tales and do a bit of Boggartt detecting - looking for signs of boggart life, adventures and mishaps….

In the morning workshop there will be Boggart stories, Boggart building and other twitchy activities

* Boggarts? if you're not sure then a word of explanation might help…Boggarts are the awkward cousins of the fairies. You'll have read Fairy Stories, we are sure and you will know that Fairies are often beautiful. Boggarts aren't. And that fairies are sometimes kind. Boggarts aren't. And that fairies sometimes grant wishes. Boggarts? Not a hope!

But Boggarts are exciting, naughty, lumpy, bumpy, hairy and stary….Boggarts are fun

Running towards adventures

adventurers gather by the fire

 A week of activity! We had planned a lively week to coincide with National Family Week - but then that was cancelled but our events went ahead anyway!

In the last few days, we've had swarms of people out looking for Faeries, Trolls and Goblins in Padley Gorge near Hathersage. That was such a magical and perilous time that photos will follow later when we have determined that they are safe from spells and that to look at them will not risk enchantment and having all of you turned into frogs (not necessarily a bad thing, I hasten to say, but we have to observe some proprieties)

a fire for burning biscuits

making baskets

Wednesday was flooded. The woods where we hoped to go Into the Woods were waterfalls, and rivulets and our heroic artists dripped within minutes. Visitors had more sense and stayed at home. We surrendered the day to the rain and its thunder

cooperation helps when
building dens

But to-day people gathered to Run Away to Adventure and in Grinlow Woods we heard the tale of the dragon who, after killing the crabs, chased the girls who had been looking in rockpools off the beach  and into the woods where they built a den that was so well-hidden no dragon could see it.

a tiny lamp lights a small corner

Then there were the family who were on a holiday sailing down the Nile when their boat was overturned and abandoned by search parties, they made a camp on the banks of the river. Braving crocodiles and hippos, they caught fish in the river and made friends with local people

moss for pillows

The stories span on, watchtowers on the heights, the nutriritonal value of toasted biscuits, a branch polished smooth and pale that looked suspiciously like a giant's thigh-bone, baskets to collect fruit in, the best ways of cooking rabbits (especially oens made of moss and bark!), wet clay lamps to light the dark, wild nights, the relative merits of logs and bracken as bedding,…….

all modern conveniences,
even a basin for washing....

on the banks of the Nile (use your imagination!)

Books we used

Places we went to for ideas in planning these sessions

Into the Woods:

TH White, The Sword in the Stone

East, Maddern & Marks, The Spirit of the Forest

Julia Donaldson, The Gruffalo

Jane Gifford, The Wisdom of Trees

JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

Dragon Girl tells her tale

Run Away To Adventure

BB, Brendon Chase

JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit

Michael Morpurgo, Kensuke's Kingdom

Ray Mears, Essential Bushcraft

Scott O'Dell, Island of the Blue Dolphins

Swiss Family Robinson

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

watchers on the hilltop

Family events in August

EVENTS FOR AUGUST

a sample folded puppet theatre.....

August has begun with some exciting activities. We were at the National PlayDay celebrations in Leek (well done, Erica and the Staffordshire Moorlands team!). Making little folded puppet theatres and new stories to tell in these, we worked with more than 100 people over the day. Today, (Thursday 2nd) I worked with visitors to SureStart centres in Buxton, using similar activities and rummaging around in flowerbeds to find bits and things to help us tell stories which ended up with sneezing heroes, a flying carpet, a knight looking for flowers and a hero who had a quiet and peaceful time in the woods!

Knights, monsters and encampments hidden in the woods....

Mums and Dads made their own theatres and stories

a fairy and her palace

1. Tuesday  28th August 2012

Away with the Faeries, Goblins and Trolls

Where: Padley Gorge on the National Trust's Longshaw 

Estate near Hathersage

Meet at the Granby Barn Interpretation Centre on the B6521

Times: 11 am - 1pm or 2pm - 4pm

Costs: no cost for activities, car parking charges may apply

No booking is needed: just turn up and join in

What is happening: we'll explore the atmospheric landscapes of Padley gorge, looking for secret places, troll baths and goblin houses. We'll make puppets, build faerie homes and monster lairs and invent stories to tell each other

who knows what we'll find in the woods

2. Wednesday 29th August 2012

Into the woods

Where: Buxton Country Park, Poole's Cavern, Green Lane, Buxton SK17 9DH

Times: 10.30 - 12.30, 1.30 - 3.30

Costs: no cost for activities, car parking charges may apply

What is happening: as explorers, naturalists and storytellers, we'll explore the woods: identifying trees, finding the animals that live there, using art and science and stories to understand the secret lives of trees

3. Friday 31st August 2012

Run Away To Adventure

Where: Buxton Country Park, Poole's Cavern, Green Lane, Buxton, SK17 9DH

Times: morning  and afternoon sessions

Costs: no cost for activities, car parking charges may apply

What is happening: making dens deep in the woods! Stranded on a desert island? Lost in the forest? Cast away…we'll make the dens we'd like to surivive in - woodland shelters, hidden dens, foraging, planning and telling the dreadful tales of how we got stranded here

Places are limited on "Run Away to Adventure" and need to be booked: call 07791 096857 or email stoneandwater@btinternet.com,  to reserve a place and receive further details

Pirates!

Away with the Faeries!

and we were! on a hot, steamy day in the Pavilion Gardens in Buxton, there were visitors everywhere. Picnics were eaten, streams splashed in. Dogs chased balls and balls chased ducks and ducks chased anyone who might have bread concealed about their persons

you never know just who might be watching

or what something might do with your hat! a troll picnic

and among all this bedlam, who would have thought that there were still small quiet corners where the watchful watched.....

Our intrepid goblin-hinters, faerie followers and troll-huggers (more than a hundred in the day), peered and pried and found clues (tiny witch's broomsticks, stray goblin ears and troll eyebrows and even scales from a mermaid's tail!)

Under the bridge,
An old troll sits,
Fishing in the river for shoes

The wicked witch of the waters
Lives in a willow tree
Watching the water and wishing she was by the sea

Faerie team in determined action

Our discoveries gave us new stories, new friends to meet. Natalie always brings chips when she comes to the Gardens so she can share fish and chips with a troll. Unfortunately, Adam realised that a lot of the ducks (see above) are actually faeries, transformed by some cheating goblins who then had a party, got drunk and fell over. The fountain is, of course, a faerie bath and when the faeries are bathing, the ducks flee because a) who would want to see a naked faerie? and b) short-sighted faeries have been known to use ducks instead of sponges

musicians of all ages helped charm the monsters from our imaginations

by the end of it all, it felt hard to tell the difference between human and non-human.....

BOOKLOG
References used:
The Fairies (poem) by William Allingham
The Spiderwick Chronicles by Tony Di Terlizzi and Holly Black
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis
one of our hunters brought Natalie, the Christmas Fairy with her as a book to recommend

Tiny! Goblins, Trolls and Faeries!

These workshops are not part of the Exploring sequence but is another Stone and Water event you might enjoy!

2012 will be the third year our local community group, Stone and Water has held some Tiny! adventures in Pavilion Gardens in Buxton as part of the Buxton Festival Fringe. After Tiny! The smallest lantern procession in the festival in 2010, we moved on to Tiny! A Pirate Adventure last year. This year we will take people on a strange exploration of the Gardens and make some of the Tiny! Goblins, Trolls and Faeries who may (or may not) live here

The Tiny! workshops have been delightfully silly and very popular. Everything works here in miniature. We make figures about 10 cm tall, adding tiny ships made round plastic bottle tops, tiny birds, lanterns, flowers, anything that takes our very small imaginations, really. Unusually for the Festival, no tickets are needed - you just turn up and join in and there is no cost (although this year we'll have some of our wonderful Exploring with Stories postcards to sell (for a small consideration)

Why not join us for a Tiny adventure?

Event details

Tiny! Goblins, Trolls and Faeries

Monday 9th

Tuesday 10th July

workshop 3 - 5.30pm

Meet by the Bandstand outside the Pavilion

make your own miniature puppets, enchanted castles and wizardly dens

and then join us in telling the terrible tales of the characters we made that afternoon!

FREE: no booking needed, just turn up and join in

Materials and storytelling provided

fb group: Stone and Water

Call: 07825 177355

Under 10s need to bring an adult with them to teach grown-ups about goblins