On Tuesday afternoon we went to Box Hill with our friends from 3 Kids and a Gluestick.  We arrived after them, and they had already finished their picnic, so we took our packed lunches with us and set off along the Natural Play Trail.

The children were very happy that there were lots of things to climb on – Rabbit in particular was in her element!

The children ate their lunch in the largest of several dens, and then explored some of the others.

We really enjoyed exploring the play trail, and could have spent even longer there if we had had time.  Owl managed to catch a falling leaf (one of the 50 things) and Monkey spent a long time trying to do the same.  Luckily he succeeded at last.  Rabbit and Tiddler didn’t manage it this time, but they had fun trying!

We found out, from our friends, that you can eat the flesh of yew berries as long as you remove the black seed first (be very careful if you try this at home.)  And Rabbit learned that it’s probably not a very good idea to go for a walk in the Autumn in your plimsolls!

The children had fun on the rope swings and it was particularly hard to get them to move on from this part of the trail…

…especially as there were more things to climb on too.

The children played trolls with their friends on the “trip-trap” bridges, while I took rather a lot of photos of fungi!

We even managed to collect a few brambles.  There were not many left, but enough to take home and cook with some apples from the garden – the perfect pudding after a quick supper of boiled eggs and toast because we were so late home.

Box Hill is so near to us and I don’t know why we’ve never been there before.  Monkey says it is his favourite National Trust place and keeps asking when we can go back, so I think we will be visiting again soon.