Highland high school pupils head into the wilds at Alladale Wilderness Reserve
ACTIVE OUTDOORS: A part-funded outdoor experience is helping give secondary pupils an in-depth understanding of nature. John Davidson spoke to some of those involved
In the heart of the Highlands, 150 children from across the north are being given a unique opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the land they call home.
These secondary school pupils don’t just get closer to nature at Alladale, they are immersed in it for a week, discovering more about the world around them as well as about themselves.
The scheme is run by a partnership of The European Nature Trust (TENT), Alladale Wilderness Reserve and Aban Outdoor, a social enterprise based in Inverness providing outdoor experiences for youngsters who might otherwise miss out on such opportunities.
TENT was set up by the owner of Alladale, Paul Lister, in 2003. As outreach manager at the charity, Kate Heightman explains: “He has always been very keen to connect people with nature because, as David Attenborough says, we don’t care about something that we’ve never experienced.
“So, we want to connect people with nature so they’ll care about it, and if they care about it they’ll want to protect it.”
This ethos lies behind the six-week Alladale Wilderness Experience programme, where children from some of the schools closest to the reserve in central Sutherland, west of Ardgay, come to spend five days and four nights.
They get involved in activities such as hiking, mountain biking, orienteering, bushcraft, tree planting, meditation and cold-water swimming; but it’s more about giving children a chance to develop that connection with nature that they may not get at home or in the classroom.
Kate says: “We were running an education programme here already but it was more focused on outdoor activities, and it wasn’t based at our lodge at Deanich – it was journey-based learning, so the kids were moving every day and there was a lot of camping involved.
“We wanted to base them in one place for three nights out of the four that they stay here, so Johannes [Petersen] from Aban and I worked together to devise a programme that would make use of the facilities that we’ve got and make sure that the kids left Alladale with an understanding of the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis that we’re facing.”
Pupils from Dornoch, Tain, Dingwall, Invergordon, Golspie, Alness and Wick have been involved in this new programme, which began last year and has so far gone down well with pupils and teachers.
One of the teachers from last year’s trips said: “‘The pupils learned a lot during the week: about Alladale; the landscape and how it formed; tree planting; bushcraft; navigation; swimming; camping, and how to look after themselves and each other.”
Pupils rated swimming, mountain biking and camping as their three favourite things during last year’s visits – with ticks and midges their least favourite.
During my conversation with Kate, I ask a question about “the estate” at Alladale and I am quickly corrected. “We call ourselves a wilderness reserve now,” she interjects. “We don’t use the word ‘estate’ anymore because we’ve transitioned away from sporting activities.
“We value nature above killing things – but we do still manage our deer herd, so we talk to the children about that; because there’s no apex predators here such as wolves or lynx, people need to control the deer numbers, and then we get venison from the reserve as well, so the kids get venison burgers made by Ardgay Game.
“The venison comes from Alladale, it goes to Ardgay Game, it gets made into burgers then it comes back for the kids to eat! They get the opportunity to try venison, which is a local, sustainable, really healthy food.”
As we are talking, the children from Wick High School are getting ready to set off on a walk to Deanich Lodge where they will see some of the work being done by the reserve, where more than a million trees have been planted and red squirrels have been reintroduced. Alladale is also part of the Saving Wildcats breeding and release programme.
With all this work going on to help nature – with the aim of fighting the climate and biodiversity crises – it’s a surprise to hear that so many of the pupils who attend have such little knowledge about the natural environment close to home.
As well as learning more about this, they are also learning more about themselves and their peers.
Kate adds: “There’s no wifi, there’s no phone signal where they’re going, so there’s no devices – the other thing that they often do is they get a bit of free time so they usually just all get together and play some kind of hide-and-seek type game or they’ve got ball games or frisbees.
“It’s really great because they all start playing together and organising themselves into teams and things like that, just playing like kids used to play.”
She also says the kids benefit by successfully completing activities and challenges they didn’t know they were capable of, as well as getting to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, “where they need help and support, and where they can rely on other people”.
“It’s a huge opportunity for them to show their skills and abilities and when you get them in a situation like this, they show how capable they are and how helpful they are, and how good they are at looking after other people and that sort of thing.
“It’s a different environment to school, and that gives a lot of kids a lot of confidence. If they are in a classroom and it’s not an environment they are comfortable with and they are not academic at all, and they’re feeling a bit like a failure, they come here and they can show the things they are good at and that makes them feel better about themselves.”
Johannes, the chief executive at Aban, is passionate about the programme they have developed to help the children benefit from what he considers a central part of secondary education, especially in the Highlands.
He explains: “Since the school closures that were enforced during lockdown there have been very few possibilities for children to experience the curriculum enrichment or alternative forms of education.
“We believe that having a week away without any technology – no mobile phone signal – and being with their peers and their teachers in the outdoor environment is an absolutely vital part of secondary school education. It is also very different from the day-to-day life of most of the teenagers that come.”
Some of them even leave with a better idea of what they might do after school, with their eyes opened to jobs in conservation and in other aspects of work on the reserve – or even as outdoor instructors.
The experience is two-thirds funded by TENT to ensure it is accessible to as many pupils as possible, including those who may not be able to afford full-cost residential trips. The charity is also looking into the possibility of corporate sponsorship and donations to help support the programme into the future.
