Highway Rat Activity Trail at Fineshade Wood

Finn loves a story before bed and The Highway Rat by Julia Donaldson is a firm favourite in our house. In fact, I’m sure that he pretty much knows it by heart!

I’ve spent a lot of time indoors this week, trying frantically to clear my desk before baby arrives, so we were all in need of an outdoor adventure. I’d seen that there was a Highway Rat trail at Fineshade Wood near Corby, so we set off for a family day out and some fresh air.

The activity set cost us £3, which contained a highway rat mask (as modelled above!) a booklet, a piece of string to make our ‘journey stick’, a pencil and crayon to do the rubbings. We also picked up some extra printouts with activities to do at home. This combined with the £4 parking fee, was a reasonably cheap way to spend a few hours.

We followed the marked route, which was about a mile long, finding the 10 boards along the way that had tasks to do and information about the woods around us.

The activities were suitable for younger children, I’d say from around 3-6 years old. Finn certainly enjoyed looking for the boards and was able to follow the arrows. He needed a little help with the rubbings, but he soon got the hang of it.

There were also characters from The Highway Rat to find along the trail and tick off in the booklet.

It was a really enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours outdoors as a family. There was enough to do to keep Finn occupied and engaged with his surroundings-it’s one of the few times I can remember not having to cajole and bribe him to get him to walk a reasonable distance! He loved looking for treasure to tie to his journey stick and ended the walk with a good collection of sticks, stones and leaves. I shall be looking out for other trails near us in the future.

Have you done a Highway Rat Trail?

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