The Dinosaur Walk – Friday May 20th 2022
Nine members of the Walden Countryside Wild Child Club walked 13 km from Noakes Grove nature reserve in Sewards End to the Kings Field nature reserve in Hempstead.
“It was a Friday – why weren’t they at school?”
Because the children are home-educated. Their Friday sessions at Walden Countryside nature reserves are important – a chance to play with their friends while learning about the countryside and its wildlife.
Why was it called “The Dinosaur Walk”?
Because the walk was also a chance to learn about the pre-history of the Walden Countryside. 13 km is a long walk for a 7 – 10 year-old child and sounds even longer when expressed as 13 million millimetres. If each millimetre takes you five years back in time, the whole walk will take the children back 65 million years when the very last dinosaurs were alive.
Each of the children who completed the whole walk received a genuine dinosaur tooth as a small prize.
“Did you find the dinosaur fossil teeth in Saffron Walden?”
Not exactly: they were supplied by Saffron Walden geologist Gerald Lucy who runs therockgallery.co.uk. Gerald explained that there are no fossils of dinosaurs in Essex: there were dinosaurs here but all evidence for them was destroyed by millions of years of erosion before the land was covered by a deep sea which deposited the Gault Clay and the Chalk. Our dinosaur fossils were found in Morocco but similar Spinosaurid dinosaurs once lived in England. 
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So what happened in the first part of the walk?
First step: 40 cm: 2000 years ago – the children might see Boudicca
fighting the Roman invaders.
First jump (160 cm) 8000 years ago – our stone age ancestors have just been cut off from Europe. England is now an island.
Short run (20 metres) 100,000 years ago – Essex humans were Neanderthals who hunted mammoths and were hunted by lions.
All that in the first few steps of a walk back in history. Just another eight miles (13 km) to reach the dinosaurs.
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Essex as it was 100,000 years ago. Painting by Alan Harris |
“Would the children’s ancestors, 65 milllion years ago, have seen those dinosaurs alive?”
Yes, this is what great, several million times great, grandma or granddad would have looked like: |
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Would you like to try the walk? It takes you through the largest areas of "Right to Roam" ancient woodlands and much other beautiful countrysides. Click here for a 2 page printer friendly map and details.
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