Pinky Trail

 Pinky trail with grandad at Pinky Park - a name that I grew up with but never knew why as it's not the official name!?! Today I found out it was because a farmer's naughty pigs would escape and go to snuffle around on land which is now the park. All this time and I never knew. 

 

Little Bird is wearing his lovely new raincoat, walking with his very best grandad - they understand each other very well. Grandad looks out for Little Bird and is great at playing the way LB likes. Chasing him around and pretending to be a monster or making silly faces.
 Now this park is Grandad's pride and joy, he helps out here and was recently involved in putting this nature trail together with the park's Friends Group and some local college students.

 

As we went around the woodland trail we found beautifully illustrated signs that unfortunately as we got further around, it appeared that somebody had started to do a very mean thing and had pulled them off the trees and thrown them on the floor :(  

 Some signs had been ripped off and chucked into bushes and the piggy sign posts with local information had been broken and thrown into shrubbery too. The rain then fell very hard and we all got soaked. Grandad was very upset, the dogs were soggy and Little Bird was in trouble for running off! Oh dear!

The afternoon then turned into a bit of detective work, finding all the thrown away signs and collecting them all in. There have been some security issues with the entrance by the woods so the local PCSO came for a chat with the park group and the park keeper. Hopefully the vandalism will stop soon. Totally mindless and such a mean thing to do as the Pinky Trail was for families like ours to enjoy, for children to learn about the woodlands and was a great effort from all involved. 

 Stunning artwork by the local college.

I hope the trail is back up and running soon - such a shame that they don't want to risk putting the signs back yet until the problem with vandalism goes away. Fingers crossed it will be back for autumn.