One of our dearest places in Edinburgh, where boys experienced riding ponies for the first time, travelled through time all the way to the Ice Age, took photos with ghouls and vampires and even met a few fairies, is the Water of Leith Conservation Trust.
When not in lockdown mode there is a Visitor Centre with interactive zone, among others, where we usually stop to cause a flood, wrestle the giant waterwheel or get a yummy cupcake. Or three. But of all this, the best are events organised outdoors with different themes and loads of love poured into them. We’ve learned so much about nature, Scottish mythology and past times, every time we visited. Always very welcoming, perfectly organized and great fun – of course we love coming back.
Obviously, this is not possible at the moment, but Waters of Leith continue with their educational programme on-line so we gave them a big thumbs up and got into Survival Skills Challenge.
Challenge One – find water Challenge Two – find food 
Challenge Three – make a shelter 
Challenge four: making fire
Water we found was quite clean, so we decided to give it another go with getting dirt out of water and making it safe to drink next time we are close to a river. Finding food was a piece of cake as we’ve been exploring that for the last few weeks . And of course every new chance to build a den and make a fire is like an early Xmas present for the boys.
What got our attention was the idea of eating bugs. We’ve tried them, of course, as a part of a family board games and at some festivals but eating them as a part of a daily menu is a whole new idea. As we found out from the Water of Leith Challenge more than two billion people eat bugs as a part of their diet. The more we’ve looked into it the more interesting it got. Up to the point where experts agree that eating bugs might be a solution to saving the planet and possible end of obesity problem. Now that’s what I call a food for thought!
Wondering what might prevail in our family – cupcakes or insects?!