Lighting the Woods

LIGHTING THE WOODS

Take time to pause,

To breathe, to walk, to wander, 

To enjoy the woods of Buxton.

Step out in the darkest time of the year into an evening of wonder and remember summer flowers, butterflies, autumn toadstools and appreciate the winter cold

 

On Saturday February 21^st 2026, we invite you to take a walk through Grinlow Woods…tiny lanterns will flicker among tree roots, giant tree people will watch from the shadows, leaf-lanterns and shimmering birds will fill the branches. Join us for an evening of wonders

 

Creeping Toad is joining forces with Stone and Water, the Babbling Vagabonds and Buxton Civic Association to create Lighting the Woods, a project that will celebrate the woods of Buxton. The underlying theme is just that: "local woods: their wildlife and wonder"

 

And it depends upon our town's creativity to make it happen! We need to people to help make tiny lanterns, create woodland windows that will fit together into curtains to hang, nimble fingers to make little glowing animals!

 

The plan

We're aiming to set up a short self-guided walk from the car park at Poole's Cavern on Saturday 21st February in a loop round the woods. The walk will be there for about 3 hours and there will be lanterns to glow over, poems to read,  small, strange characters to spot…big, strange characters to wave to!  

There will be public events in January and February where anyone can come along (dates and venues below) and make a lantern to add to the collection (and make another to take home!). 

 

Events

Public events are still finalising: hopefully a couple more will join this list

All events are free

 

January: 

Sunday 25th: at Poole's Cavern: Woodland windows and wild birds : free, drop-in public event: woodland inspired art. Coinciding with RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch, we'll be encouraging people to have a go here at the Cavern but then to take information away to do a Birdwatch survey of their own at home

Event link: https://fb.me/e/5swu3d7Qk

Times:10.30-3.00

Venue: Buxton Country Park, Temple Road, Buxton, SK17 9DH

Moreinformation about the Birdwatch: 

https://www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happening/big-garden-birdwatch

 

February: we’ll add details nearer the time:for now, get these dates in your diary!

Sunday 15th: Buxton Country Park: bottle lanterns: drawing on the patterns of winter trees, leaf skeletons and the shapes of hibernating animals 

17th Buxton Library: bugs and beasties: using shiny scrap and fluorescent card to give us some wildlife for the final event

19th: ss at the Crescent: we’re joining the BCHT for their “Where we live is…Creative’ event. Come along and make some woodland wonders! We’re going for bottle lanterns, shadow shapes, tree windows  and  general wildness 

21st: Lighting the Woods: final event: late afternoon wanderings in Grinlow Woods

 

 

 

 

Words and Ash Trees

Words and Ash Trees

poems, puppets and reflections 

on the woodlands of Buxton

We are the trees

Who shed slim grey dresses

For coats of green and brown and lichen,

Who comb the air,

Who dance in the wind,

Who grow hope from seedlings.

(From We are the Trees)

Watching our woodscape change as ash dieback worked its way into the trees, we asked people if these woods were special to them and if so, why? We turned that question round and asked people to look at the world as the trees might.

Gathering responses, back in 2020 as various waves of lockdown tripped up public events and hands on workshops,  Stone and Water and Creeping Toad took all those words and shook them up in a word-blender (like a food-mixer but with a stronger dictionary-drive). As the summer went on, we also gathered pictures from visitors to the woodlands of Buxton (thanks to Buxton Civic Association for all their work keeping our woods open, accessible and beautiful)... eventually all this grew into a pair of poems: "We are the People" and "We are the Trees". Then those pictures on cloth and paper grew shoots and faces and became a pair of tall trees with the help of visitors, Two Left Hands and our Stone and Water team

 

Our Tree People have gone on to have their own adventures...

• 2020: sprouted full grown from the fresh shoots of wild imaginations
• 2020: filmed by OffTheFence for the CelebrationEarth! project
• 2022: featured in Treasuring Trees: celebrating the trees of Derbyshire at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery
• 2022: guest appearance in the Nairn Books and Arts Festival
• The poems themselves have also been recited in story performances, used in ceremonies, and been hung on trees to provoke thoughts on woodland wanders

 

Now, as their leaves begin to fall, it felt like a good time to celebrate our Tall Trees and the poems associated with them

 

• Download the full poems, here
• Watch We are the Trees, here
• Find out more about BCA and Buxton's woodlands, here
• And visit Stone and Water's website: https://stoneandwaterblog.wordpress.com/about/ash-keys/

We are the people

Who walked,

Who wondered,

Who laughed,

Who talked,

Who held hands,

Who strolled,

Who held their hearts and loves and hopes

Under Ash trees.

(from We are the People)

with many thanks to all the members of the public who added to our collections of words, phrases, thoughts and images, to the makers, painter, wild imaginers and reckless puppeteers and to James Lampard for wonderful saxophone playing to wake our puppets, 'way back when

 on Lindow Moss

poems and puppets from a workshop at Wilmslow Library as part of the Discover Lindow Festival

 

Wandering on Lindow where the Common meets the Moss, where tree gives way to peat, where canopy becomes open sky, we look around and see

 

Beautiful, a butterfly like a bird, flies

Under the tree, knowing it is

Time for dinner, flying through

Tree trunks, like an

Elephant's loopy trunk, and there -

Rabbits ahoy!

Flying low, looking for flowers,

Leaves all around, but one flower bright as a

Yellow banana

 

and we enjoy the butterfly's seeking flight, fluttering through the trees and out onto the grass

 

Rabbits run from the Fox,

All the way to the field

Bouncing to a hole

But bouncing over the hole

In and out, dodging, dashing, running,

Trying to survive

 

We watch the rabbits run, trying to tell them that we are not foxes, not dangers but friends. They do not listen. Then, on a stone, warmed by the sun and dreaming quiet, reptile dreams,  we find a wonder, a rare and marvellous moment

 

Sliding through the forest,

Never stopping hunting,
Always catching prey,

Killing with his fangs,

Everyone runs away.

 

Or so they say! We don't run. We watch! How beautiful is the adder on his stone.

 

A shadow flickers over the grass and makes us look up

 

Speedning and darting,

Powerful predator,

Acrobatic.

Run!

Run!

Out come the talons,

Woe to the prey.

Handsome carnivore,

Amazingly quick,

Watching for prey, before the

Kill!

 

And quietly, we walk back to the path and our everyday world.  We head home knowing that there is a wonderful, wild world there, just over there, past the fence, through the gate, on the edge of our safe human world.

 

With many thanks to the Discover Lindow team 

and the wonderful folk at Wilmslow Library

But most of all to our team of young poets and puppeteers

Lost Cat Puppets - make your own

 Snow cats, flower cats,  fierce cats, friendly cats
Make your own Lost Cat Puppet

 

We’ve been making some wonderful Lost Cat puppets. If you missed us at Buxton Museum, why not have a go and make your own puppet?

Once upon a time, big cats roamed the hills of Buxton. Scimitar-toothed cats (Victory Quarry, Dove Holes) were here when humans wandered into the Peaks about 30,000 years ago, while cave lions lingered until about 12,000 years ago, (Hindlow Cave, near Earl Sterndale). Lynx loitered longer than anyone realised and might have been prowling Scottish forests into this millennium. Then there are our domestic moggies now, offering affection and purrs and sometimes causing chaos among our small birds and mammals.

And, of course, at the moment, we have our own Mysterious Big Cats being reported like shadowy ghosts from across the county!

 

We’re celebrating cats! Especially the Lost Cats of our hills, cats who knew this land in different climates, with warmer– or colder – days and using their stories to look at the world around us as it changes again

 

As part of the Our Street programme with Buxton’s Heritage Action Zone, Buxton Museum and Art Gallery are bringing these lost cats back to the town. Building up to a wonderful Carnival of the Cats on Sunday 23^rd April (times and meeting points to follow!), there are events making Lost Cat Puppets, masks, small puppets and helping make a large cat puppet

 

Today we’d like to invite you to make your own Lost Cat puppet, a mini-sabre-tooth to walk beside you. The instructions feel quite long but the making is quite straightforward and you can improvise around the instructions!

 

You will need:

• 2 sheets of card (A4 size) – or an empty cereal packet
• Some old socks or a T-shirt to cut up ( we also used strips of fur fabric for legs and tails)
• Pens for colouring in
• Scrap paper and double-sided tape (or a gluestick)
• Strong sticky tape
• A stapler
• Some thin string
• 2 pea-sticks or other thin canes
• A sharp spike for making holes
• An empty plastic bottle – about 1 litre size should do

 

1. First Steps (pawprints?). Cut your T-shirt (or whatever) into strips about 60 cm long (they don’t need to be quite that long) and about 8cm wide – you’ll need 6 of these strips

Take 4 of these strips and tie a knot at one end and then about a finger-length further along the the strip – this gives you a paw and a knee joint.

 

Lay one sheet of card flat on a table and place your plastic bottle on it with the top at one end of the sheet. Mark where the base of the bottle comes to – hopefully a few cm short of the other end of the sheet. Mark that point – later on this will be the Cat’s bottom! If your bottle is longer than the card, use some strong scissors to cut the top end off the bottle so it will fit. 

 

If you are using a box….go on to #2

 

2. Fold your card in half lengthways and a small curve off the front corners. Using a cereal packet? Start at one corner and measure along the long side about 30 – 35 cm. You need to cut the box so we have 2 panels joined by the side of the box with those panels being about 35 cm long and maybe 10-12 cm deep. Draw the shape with a pen then cut it out.

 

3. Now, staple (or tape) your legs into the inside/underside of the card or box. Two should go by those curved corners and the back legs about 6 cm in from the end of the sheet of card – or at the back of the card box. The legs will probably be too long, so look at them and decide how long (or short!) you want the legs to be. Fix them in place and then cut off the extra (keep these bits)

 

4. Decorate the outside/other side of the cat’s body. Use pens or crayons or torn up paper and tape or glue. Maybe use the extra cloth from the legs? A furry ridge along the cat’s back often looks good. What sort of cats are you making? We have had snow cats that hunt icicle mice, party cats, flowers cats that hide in gardens, as well as stripy tigers and leopard-spotted hunters.

 

zigzag lines show cuts where a fold is needed

5. Done? Let the body dry if it needs it and look at the head. The pdf attachment has copies of some templates (copies also at the end of this post) but you could draw them yourself. You could also change your mind and decide you’re making a wolf or a bear! Use a piece of card about the same size as the card you used to make the body. Fold the card in half and either draw round a template or draw your own head shape.  We use a cut between the ears and a fold there to make a forehead and 2 cuts each side of the “chin” to shape that . Cut and fold to make cat heads. Add teeth? Decorate!

 

notice the folds that give the head shape

6. Done? Now use one of the last strips of cloth to make a neck – it needs to be longer than a real one would be. Staple the neck to the inside of the body and fix it to the head between the ears (not at the chin). You could also go to the other end and make 2 cuts and fold the cats bottom like a box, giving it a bit of shape. If you’re using a cereal pack you’ve got that rump ready already. Stick or staple on a tail

 

this puppet has a string for its tail as well

7. Last steps in sight!

Strings: cut 4 pieces of string, maybe 75 cm long. Tie one end or each string to a matchstick.

Head: make a hole about half-way between the eyes and the ears on each side of the face. Thread a string through each hole so that the matchstick catches on the inside. Tape over this to anchor it. Then tie or tape the other nd of the string to a short garden cane. Try to balance this so the head hangs evenly. We’ll adjust for your height in a few minutes

Body: this time we need 2 holes on the cat’s spine, maybe 5 cm in from each end. Again thread and tape the strings. Attach the strings to a longer garden cane (about the same width apart n the cane as they are on the puppets.

Stand up, gently pick up your rods ad find a cat lolloping around beside you. Adjust strings simply by winding the strings onto their rods and taping in place. Aim for a length that has the cat “walking” beside you while you hold the cane about waist height.

 

8. Fixing the bottle. We’ve been fitting a bottle inside the puppet to keep the card open and give the cat a stronger tummy. Tuck the bottle into that space and tape it in place.

 

Now practice going for a walk.

Can your cat jump onto a chair

Lie down

Go to sleep

Wake slowly.

Make a noise….

CAT HEAD TEMPLATES (YOU CAN ALSO DOWNLOAD THEM HERE)

Cat

wolf? or good for a cat with a longer face

Bear