An actual Living Rainforest in the middle of the Berkshire countryside?! Strange, but believe it people, it's true...

This weekend I went away with my uni gang to the Cotswolds. My friend Kat (far left) moves to Singapore for an indefinite period soon and we all needed a weekend away slopping around in our pyjamas 'til noon, pootling in picturesque villages buying things we didn't really need, breaking casserole dishes we found in the cottage and eating massive pies in country pubs (accompanied by lots of wine) to make us all feel like we'd spent some quality time together before she left.

Now that the Brown Sign Way has truly overtaken my life most of our trips out were dominated by frequent shouts which resulted in screeching halts when anyone saw a brown sign. One such time was when we saw this one pointing to a 17th Century Quaker Meeting house in Nailsworth. It excited me. I was sure it would be a cool crooked little house with information about it presented in a plastic sheet on an A4 piece of paper typed in around 1989 on a typewriter and pinned to the wall with drawing pins (the very best kind of information) so on my insistence we headed up the hill and followed the brown sign. Sadly Lisa's mini with all of us in it was no match for the hill it was on, so I only got a glimpse of the house as we powered on past in 1st gear. The hill was so ridiculously steep that when we finally found ourselves up a dead end with only one way to go (down), the anxiety, sweat and tears exuding from the car was undeniable and there was no asking if I could get out and pay the meeting house a little visit. Instead I sat quietly while we slid slowly backwards with my friends bellowing "left!" "right!" "no left, left!" trying hard to avert nasty ploughage-into-dry-stone-wallage. Well here's another fine mess you've gotten us into brown signs...

Mission: Explore via The Brown Sign Way. Geography is COOL man...

I was very excited to be tweeted at the other day by a cool bunch of geographers (they exist, I promise you) called The Geography Collective who launched a great website last year called Mission: Explore. They have an affiliated iPhone app and now 2 books that are packed full of missions for kids to do. They aim to get children noticing the world around them and engaging with their surroundings by completing lots of fun and diverse exercises. They're designed to get kids actually doing and thinking for themselves, and (thank God) encourages them to move away from their computer and TV screens and playing in the outside world. There are hundreds to do and the variety is huge so every mission makes you think in new and interesting ways. Some missions are location specific so if you are using the iPhone app it recognises your location and lists missions near you (oh iPhone I say I don't want you, but I really do) and many can be completed anywhere.

Here's an example of one of my favourites:

Design a game

Design a game that can only be played in this place.

Geography

Think carefully about the objects, patterns and other things you can use to help you make up your game.
Mission number: ME1154

Tips

Try to design a game that doesn't involve a lot of shouty stuff or throwing spiky objects.

Cool huh? Clearly I am a big fan of getting kids noticing and doing and engaging so when cool geographer Dan from The Geography Collective tweeted that my brown signs idea would make a good mission for Mission: Explore I jumped at the chance to write one for them, and they liked it!

It has just been added to the site and is here if you would like to have a look... Go Brown Sign Collecting! and even better accept the mission and do it yourself or with your kids, and be sure to tell me how you're getting on!

If I died and went to brown sign heaven I would spend eternity doing days like this....

So this is me on Saturday at 6.30am after approximately 5.5 hours sleep and guess what, I was in a stinker of a mood. Anyone who's ever had the displeasure of being anywhere near me when I've had less than 10 hours sleep knows it's not a nice experience and the reason for my lack of sleep wasn't even from a night on the tiles, sadly no. It was after a hectic Friday night waitressing, where I made so many mistakes that I frequently wanted to burst out crying, so much so that even disappearing out the fires escape to smoke a lot of fags didn't help. And it was my poor sister, The Mose, who was on the receiving end of my bad mood in the morning. She's usually happy to spend the day with me, especially on brown sign days but, unsurprisingly, on Saturday she wasn't feeling it. She's also a great believer in pathetic fallacy and it was one of those dull rainy days that makes you feel a bit arse. Predictably then we lost our tempers and got in the car in silence with no idea where we were going, so I pointed us the direction of deepest darkest Kent and we huffed off onto the M20.

After a little while being in a mood though I find it gets boring and coffee and sticky buns from the petrol station seem to make everything just a little bit better, also The Mose finally chose a destination; Tenterden "the jewel in the crown of the Kent Weald" a mere 50 miles away, where there was also a museum shown in red on my AA map (thank the Lord for tourist maps. Pah! Who needs an iPhone?). Things were looking up.

Staring down the barrel of some massive guns

A few weeks ago I noticed a museum on Twitter which immediately attracted my attention. Why? Because it's called "Explosion!" that's why, now you're interested, see? I especially liked the use of the hard hitting exclamation mark so I had a lot of respect for them straight away. This Portsmouth based museum looked like just the kind of place I love the very best, with dedicated passionate staff and an impressive repertoire of activities and exhibits which chart the history and importance of naval firepower. However, as much as I wanted to pay these guys a visit the 200 mile round trip from London was mildly off-putting. Also my life at the moment is a lot about doing boring but important computer based work with the website so felt I couldn't really take the time out, until.... My parents (being the older traveller) told me they were taking a 2 week cruise departing from Southampton and I was the lucky sole they'd chosen to drive them down there. Ecstatic to be given an excuse to hit the south coast I piled my parents and their luggage into the car (my mum's car that is, and what a joy it was to drive without the terrible my-exhaust's-about-to-fall-off anxiety), deposited them at the extremely windy and rainy Southampton dock 10 and shot straight off to Portsmouth harbour.

I'm a big fan of this brown sign bandwagon

During my extensive research of the brown signed attractions of Britain I have discovered some pretty cool things going on all over the country that are either run or linked up with brown signs. The website I am building (www.thebrownsignway.com) will have an area dedicated to my findings don't you worry but I thought I would share this one with you in the mean time.

www.visitwoods.org.uk is an exciting programme set up by The Woodlands Trust in conjunction with other organisations like The National Trust, the RSPB, the Forestry Commission and The Wildlife Trusts to (you guessed it) encourage people to visit more of our gorgeous woodlands. There is a great search facility which throws up all the woods near you and contains lots of information about our precious woodlands. It's an excellent place to begin your discovery of the natural world around you and will hopefully inspire you to go enjoying woods for a million different reasons. My personal favourite reason: when I'm feeling a bit lonely. My worst reason: training for a marathon. Whatever your reason though they're important and visiting one will enrich your life (and make you feel quite tired if you run around it a lot).

The Woodlands Trust are also running an important campaign at the moment to protect our woodlands from being sold off by the government and you can sign up to their petition here, every name makes a difference http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/en/campaigning/save-ancient-forests/Pages/fc-disposals-act-now.aspx?WT.mc_id=fc

I am always up for getting people to experience all the great places we have around us in Britain, so of course this project gets my hearty seal of approval, but there is another more silly reason why I like it a little too much, follow the link and just look at the logo. Quality, rock on The Woodlands Trust.

http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/en/visit-woods/Pages/visitwoods.aspx