Wild Work Days are a great day where you can do team building exercises with your colleagues that help the environment. My day started off helping Elliott (who is part of the community engagement team at the Attenborough Nature Reserve) prepare for the Wild Work Day by packing sandwiches, tools and most importantly coffee!

At around 10am we welcomed the team and asked for their emergency details and their car number plate, as they get free parking. After everyone arrived and signed in, we started our walk around the nature reserve.

Our first destination was the information sign where Elliott gave us a brief history of the nature reserve. As I do not want to spoil the surprise, here are my top three favourite facts that I learned: 1. It used to be a quarry sight, 2. It is not named after Sir David Attenborough, however he visited the site when it first opened and when the visitor centre opened, 3. It is 220 hectares.

After our fun history lesson, we continued walking, Elliott was showing us the beautiful views whilst also explaining what more needs to be done to protect the environment. 

Here we are on the bridge with a coal power plant in the background.

We then continue walking and Elliott questions the group, "Why is it important to protect the environment?" Many people in the group suggested great ideas such as "it looks nice", "it helps you breathe", "it provides vegetation" and so on. It is nice to see that people know how important it is to protect the environment.

On another stop on our walk, we were taught about invasive plants and how many (not all) non-native plants are invasive. As many of them grow along the riverbanks and have short roots it tends to lead to erosion. Because of this there needs to be people to help dig up the plants to prevent them from spreading to more areas of land.

Then we kept walking past more beautiful scenery.

Finally, after working as a team we have managed to build the two sides of the log store! Many people who joined us for the Wild Work Day said that it was great to be outdoors and work as a team. Being outdoors can really boost morale and wellbeing especially if you are working together with your colleagues to build something.

Hopefully after reading this, you can see how much fun I have had being on a Wild Work Day and hopefully you will consider participating in one too!