My Great Outdoors is a resource to draw upon for enjoying our natural world. The website has been created by countryside and nature lover Sue Cassell.
The great outdoors encompasses:
- parks and parkland
- allotments
- community farms
- gardens
- village and millennium greens
- fields and hedgerows
- meadows
- woodlands
- forests
- grasslands
- heathlands
- moorlands
- hills
- mountains
- fens
- inland waterways (canals)
- lakes, streams, rivers and riverbanks, seas and oceans
- the coast and shorelines
- the sky, including the sky at night
These places and spaces are great for us and great for nature – home to a variety of flora (flowers, trees and other plants) and fauna (wildlife, such as amphibians, birds, insects, mammals, reptiles and fish). The natural world is beautiful and wonderful and there’s extensive research that shows that being outdoors in natural surroundings does us the power of good – the benefits may be subtle, but they are powerful and long-lasting.
The website has been compiled by volunteer Sue Cassell who has worked over several years for a number of countryside and wildlife organisations: The National Trust, The Youth Hostels Association, the Campaign for National Parks, Exmoor National Park Authority and, most recently, the Natural Environment Research Council. The photographs within the website are a mix of Sue’s and those from Pixabay (Sue also contributes to Pixabay’s database of photos).
Sue is a countryside and wildlife lover and a qualified walks leader. She specialises in short linear walks, which are great for newcomers to walking and those without a car. There’s nothing more disheartening for people without cars than opening a walks book to see the description start with the words ‘from the car park…’.
