Ep 243 - New Site, PHDs & Slop Chat!
From The Forest School Podcast by Lewis Ames and Wem Southerden
April 24, 2026 · 44 min · Season 2 · Episode 243
About this episode
Lewis and Wem discuss their recent experiences, including a holiday in Spain and updates on their forest school project.
We recorded this one outside in the sunshine, which felt almost unreasonably good. Wem and I had a lot to catch up on and approximately no plan for how to do it. This is what came out.Wem started with a holiday debrief from the Picos de Europa in northern Spain. A campervan, the mountains, storks nesting on telegraph poles, vultures, a scops owl that everyone else in the vicinity mistook for a car alarm, and a brief but passionate argument for why campervans are the best possible holiday format for families who find transitions hard. There is also a detour into the biggest swing in Spain and a childhood memory of Wem's involving shoes, fences, and wet morning grass that I will not spoil.Then I had some news to share. The woodland is growing. I have agreed a price on a flat, bluebell-filled acre right next to the existing site, which takes Children of the Forest from three acres of north-west-facing hill to over four acres, with open canopy, big old oaks, and a completely different feel to everything I have worked in for the last decade. Ten years to the month, as it happens. We talk about what that kind of change feels like when you have been going through a flat patch, and why…
People in this episode
Host: Lewis Ames
Guest: Wem Southerden
Topics covered
- camping
- forest school
- PhD update
- nature
- personal growth
Keywords
- forest school
- Picos de Europa
- campervan
- PhD
- Cultural Emergence
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: Cultural Emergence
Places: Picos de Europa, Spain, Children of the Forest, north-west
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