00:00 Yeah, I mean, one of my favourite places is, I live on the South Coast, so I'm lucky to
00:06 have the dramatic coastline. And one of my favourites is the Isle of Purbeck. So it's
00:11 beautiful around the Dorset coastline.
00:14 I'm blessed to live in the centre in Birmingham, in the centre of the country. So we're kind
00:18 of central to kind of just go out, up, down, left and right. And you know what I found,
00:24 Lauren, there are so many places around me. If you live in Birmingham or the West Midlands,
00:28 you'll know this. There's a lot of parks in Birmingham, more than I even knew existed.
00:33 And we're trying to tick off all the different parks in our own region to start with. And
00:38 they are beautiful. And then we're going wider and wider and wider.
00:41 It seems like the school holidays have only just begun, but already nearly 50% of parents
00:46 said they're already running low on fun yet cheap ideas to keep their children busy each
00:51 day. That's according to new research from Ordnance Survey, which also highlighted that
00:56 a whopping 85% of parents are looking for low cost ways to keep their kids active during
01:01 the six weeks of summer. So why not combine the two? Catherine Mary, sports broadcaster,
01:06 Olympic bronze medalist and mum of two says she loves getting out and about with the whole
01:11 family in tow.
01:12 So many of us don't know what's in our own backyard sometimes, you know, there's a lot
01:16 going on. So yeah, some of those statistics were like, wow. But I, as a mother of two,
01:21 I can appreciate, and I am one of those 85% of parents that are always looking for low
01:25 cost ways to do things with my family.
01:27 OS has teamed up with Natural England and TV character, Shaun the Sheep, to create a
01:32 list of the top seven countryside walks around England and Wales this summer. They're in
01:37 Seven Sisters Country Park in East Sussex, Burritten in Hampshire, Bambrough in Northumberland,
01:42 Pembroke in Pembrokeshire, Sudley Castle in the Cotswolds, Tintagel in Cornwall and the
01:46 Lizard in Cornwall.
01:48 We tried to choose areas which were going to be accessible. We wanted to have circular
01:53 routes, ones that are not too long for little legs, because obviously children can wear
01:58 out quite quickly, and also ones that are near a national trail as well. So there's
02:03 lots of nice facilities around. So good car parking, a good visitor centre, with that
02:08 all important ice cream stop at the end.
02:11 It comes as part of National Map Reading Week, where OS is urging parents to get the kids
02:16 outdoors and into the great British countryside.
02:19 I'm a big, big, big advocate of being able to at least have the basic skills to read
02:24 a map, because I think we're very technology-based nowadays, aren't we? It's like, I don't
02:29 need a map, I've got it on my phone, I can drive here, I've got all these sat-nav things.
02:34 But what happens if that isn't the case at some point and you've got a bad signal
02:37 or you lose your phone? And I think learning to read a map and having the basic skills
02:42 is really, really important, because for many reasons it helps children develop the critical
02:51 skills as well, in terms of solving and planning. There's so many good reasons why map reading
02:58 skills are important, and at the top of that list for me is actually it's really good fun.
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