What do city kids do?

This weeks Gallery is 'Adventure'

I don't live in a completely remote area, it's a large town but surrounded by fields on the edge of the Welland Valley.  Everyday I feel lucky to live so close to the countryside and often wonder how children in cities even begin to enjoy nature in the way the children here get the chance.

Today, I set out on a steady, but cold, walk and went through a field I've not walked in over a year.  As usual, there was hardly anyone around. But everywhere I looked there were sled tracks.

Still no one just sheep and snow as  far as the eye could see.

And then shapes much less sheepy started to appear.  The shouts and squeals gave them away first.

The 'bushes' on the horizon giving them away by their bright colours.

 Lots of kids, running, shouting, laughing, falling...

 Climbing

At every corner I turned or style I climbed there was another set of kids that had claimed a part of a field as their own for a while.  Building snowmen, making snow angels, snowballing but mainly snow boarding and sledging.

And as I headed home more kids were coming out over the fields on the hunt for the best hills.

There was hardly any adults around, with the tiddlers there were mums and dads but mainly it was tweens and teens walking a mile or 2 across the snowy fields to the hills with their friends.

What do the city kids do when the snow falls?  Because I know it isn't this.

Ask the teens around here what they think of it and they will tell you many things about hating to catch the school buses, the lack of good accessible transport to them, the lack of things to do.  Very few of them are aware of how in years to come, these trawls across the fields with their mates will be the happy memories they will look back on.  They have no idea how lucky they are having these adventures and won't until it they are no more.