Roots and Shoots Highland

Roots and Shoots Highland We’re a not-for-profit outdoor learning social enterprise based in Badenoch & Strathspey

Research shows that spending time outdoors does us all good, whatever our age. We want to help everyone enjoy time in the outdoors, from early years right through to our most elderly residents. We run after school, holiday and weekend clubs, family programmes, mental health programmes, training and other support for getting into the outdoors and connecting with nature. Please get in touch if you h

ave any questions or comments – we’d be delighted to hear from you. The Directors of Roots and Shoots Highland Community Interest Company are Rachel Avery, Jillian Robertson, Kristin Hayes and Kiri Clark, all experienced outdoor learning practitioners who live in the Strath. We work with other brilliant local freelance practitioners to deliver our programmes.

03/09/2026

We’ve had a fair bit of rain recently and there’s no high fire risk warnings in place, so we’re back to using small ‘leave-no-trace’ fires as part of our regular Forest School sessions.

We’re based in the Cairngorms National Park and there’s a new bylaw in place banning fires from April till September. However there is an exemption for organised groups to continue to have fires when there isn’t a high fire risk, and with prior written consent from the landowner.

We have consent from both landowners whose ground we use for term-time Forest School programmes. So, when conditions are safe to do so, we’ll continue to use a small campfire, in a raised fire bowl, in our sessions to cook food or make crafts or keep the midgies away! Helping children and young people know how to use fire responsibly (and when it’s not safe to have any fires at all!) is a really important part of Forest School and part of modelling and fostering a love and deep connection to our natural world. As is foraging! And there are SO many mushrooms out in our woods just now!!

These look great! Free sessions to help folk get out on their bike. And they can sort you out with a bike under their 'p...
03/09/2026

These look great! Free sessions to help folk get out on their bike. And they can sort you out with a bike under their 'pay what you can' scheme, if you don't have one.

Helpers with raking needed! Kingussie, this Friday afternoon and Sunday afternoon. For the last 4 years we’ve run a vol...
01/09/2026

Helpers with raking needed! Kingussie, this Friday afternoon and Sunday afternoon.

For the last 4 years we’ve run a voluntary project to improve the biodiversity of some verges in Kingussie. Each year around this time, when all the flowers have gone to seed, Highland council strims the verges and we rake up the cut material and remove it. This reduces the fertility of the areas over time, favouring the wildflowers rather than the grass.

The council strimmed the verges up Ardbroilach Road yesterday, and we’re borrowing a drum mower to cut the area at Garraline Terrace from Speyside Fields for Wildlife.

If you’re able to help rake for an hour or so on Friday afternoon or Sunday afternoon, please get in touch as we’d dearly love the help! Or just rock up at 2pm Sunday at Garraline Terrace. Bring a rake if you have one, bit we have some spares.

(Pics from earlier in the year and last year’s raking!)

06/08/2026

We had a great last day at our nature play holiday club in Anagach Woods, Grantown on Spey today.

Huge thanks to the Anagach Woods Trust for 10 years of their support, and for all they do to look after these special woods. Big thanks to the Rotary Club of Spey Valley for funding the free places for children referred through the local primary schools, and to our fab leaders, and to all the children who joined us for fantabulous child-led, adventurous play in the woods this week.

That’s our holiday club wrapped up for the summer. We’ll be back the second week of the October school holidays. If you’re not on the mailing list to know when booking opens, and you would like to be, do send a message with your email address.

Have a brilliant rest of summer holidays and hope to see many of you in October!

05/08/2026

It was pretty wet as all the children left after a fun day at holiday club! The bucket filled up in less than a minute! We need this and more though to help put the wild fire out properly.

05/08/2026

We had lots of fun at our nature play holiday club in Anagach Woods, Grantown on Spey, despite some periods of very heavy rain.

There was the usual fun of hammocks and nets, wide games on the meadow, bug hunting and den making. We had some amazing creations in the tool zone, including a bus, a fish and a spoon, and lots of fun making pictures with different coloured mud!

We also made some ink from oak marble galls. That’s the kind of ink used to write Pride and Prejudice, and the Magna Carta! We cut up the galls collected from oak trees, ground them up small in a coffee grinder, and simmered it in water for an hour on a gas stove, with three rusty nails. We then strained the ink into an ink bottle, and made quill pens from large feathers. It was quite hard to use the quills but some of us really got the hang of it!

We finished up with making banana and chocolate hazelnut spread tortilla pinwheels! What a great way to spend , a celebration of children’s play!!

04/08/2026

We had so much fun at today’s holiday club in Anagach Woods we didn’t take very many photos!!

There was lots of hammock and net play, wide games in the meadow, fabulous dens, rope swings, crafts, mud kitchen, bug hunting and whittled creations from young sycamore trees. We talked to all the children how sycamore trees aren’t native to Scotland and can take over, so we carefully cut some down to leave more space for native trees. This is positive woodland management, and also means we can use the green wood to make everything from swords, bows and arrows, dream catchers and den floors!

Our three ‘woodland wishes’ at Roots and Shoots are Look after eachother, Look after ourselves and Look after the woods. Each session we discuss how we can do each of these three things whilst we’re out in the woods together so everyone has a really fun time and stays safe.

03/08/2026

We had a great first session at our nature play holiday club in Anagach Woods in Grantown on Spey today. Lots of adventurous child-led play, including wide games in the meadow, blaeberry picking, whittling, hammock and net play, mud kitchen, bug spotting and crafts.

Big thanks to the Rotary Club of Spey Valley for funding places for children referred through the local primary schools.

At today’s Wild Rovers session we were back out to Glen Feshie quarry. It was a little damp but this did not put us off....
03/08/2026

At today’s Wild Rovers session we were back out to Glen Feshie quarry. It was a little damp but this did not put us off.

We all gently worked to remove natural regeneration in the quarry. This work is essential for the very rare Dingy Skipper and Small Blue butterflies who rely on small plants known as Kidney Vetch and Birds Foot Trefoil. Our efforts create the best possible conditions for further growth.

It’s great to clear a section and look around at our hard work. What’s not to like; enjoying the chat, eating today’s chocolate cake, and giving a little back to nature.

The Wild Rovers is a roving practical conservation group for adults experiencing poor mental health in Badenoch and Strathspey, in partnership with Badenoch and Strathspey Community Connections and the Cairngorms National Park volunteer rangers, and funded by Highland Third Sector Interface.

It’s a great afternoon out and we visit different sites around Badenoch & Strathspey each session. Get in touch if you’d like to join us!

30/07/2026

We had a great last day at our nature play holiday club in Aviemore today. There were loads of different games like camouflage and tiger tag, foraging for wild raspberries, elder bead crafts, whittling (including a run on making fishing rods!), dissecting owl pellets, mud kitchen, net and hammock play and amazing den and tree houses made - including one den with a chandelier!!
We finished the day with fruit skewers and mint sugar - scrummy!

Huge thanks to the dream team of leaders this week, to all the kids for playing so brilliantly, and to Allan Munro for his decade of support for our holiday club in his beautiful birchwoods on the outskirts of Aviemore. Next week, we’re at Anagach Woods in Grantown!

Address

Kingussie

Telephone

+447956083444

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