Happy Birthday to the Gruffalo! #weloveforests

by louisejedwards on 21/03/2014

This year The Gruffalo celebrates the 15th birthday. The Classic children’s bedtime story hero is a tweenager!

From Friday 15 April (which falls in the Easter holidays for most of us) the Forestry Commission is running Gruffalo activity trails through until September. You can join mouse, owl, fox and snake in hunting out the fearsome Gruffalo. More details can be found here and I would throughly recommend signing up to keep posted about all the news and events that are happening, especially if you have children who are big fans.

Of course The Gruff (as we like to call him) isn’t the first Julia Donaldson character to have their own trail in the forest, Stickman was seen there last December. The trail really brought the book to life and was a fabulous experience. We will certainly be reporting back from our awesome local Forestry commission site, Sherwood Pines when we visit over the school holidays.

Saturday 7 June is another date for your diary as it sees the Gruffalo birthday party picnic so that sounds like it is bound to be fun (check your local site as this may be a bookable event)! Why not take along a Gruffalo inspired picnic? Mummy Mishaps has some fabulous ideas!

In June The Forestry will also be unveiling the 15 giant wooden Gruffalo sculptures at selected sites (Sherwood Pines is one of them – hurrah!) for families to hunt out amongst the forest. I envisage this will fill the forests with shrieks of “I’ve found one!” echoing through the trees (I am surely not the only one with loud children!?).

As big camping fans I am also looking forward to visiting one (at least!) of the Forestry Commissions camping in the forest sites where you can also find Gruffalo activity trails. I love the idea of camping in the forest and waking up to beautiful woodland walks every day.

Then once the summer fun has quietened down the Gruffalo’s Child trails start on 3rd October and run until the end of January 2015. Wowsers, we are so spoilt!

So, as we are all no more than one hour from our local Forestry Commission site, there is no excuse to get out in your beautiful woodlands and enjoy some forestry fun!