Introduction to the Water of Leith

I've spent the last two days teaching An Introduction to the Water of Leith for the University of Edinburgh Office of Lifelong Learning and based at the Water of Leith Visitor Centre (hence the lack of blog posts over the last couple of days!). The course was fully booked and all the students were very motivated and enthusiastic, several now want to take up voluntary conservation work or find out more about wildlife. The course covered the prehistory and history of the river, wildlife and environmental issues. The discussions were excellent! We spent an hour outside thinking about how best to observe nature - keeping our eyes and ears open and looking out for signs of animals (droppings, nibbled cones etc) which might indicate where animals had been even though we didn't see the animals themselves. We also had a two hour guided walk round the Colinton and Criaglockart Dells, looking at the wildlife and historical features. I hope to be able to do this course again in the future, possibly in spring when there would be more birds about!

I'm running a series of guided walks along the Water of Leith (for Edinburgh City Council) in the autumn, you can find out more here.

I'm also running a course on creative writing for the environment for the University of Edinburgh Office of Lifelong Learning, you can find out more here.