The story of the bog box

Flanders Moss NNR

We recently set up a box next to the bench on the stone slab at Flanders. In the box is a book for visitors to record their thoughts about Flanders – creatively if they want. In this way we hope that it will be a way of capturing the flavour what what people think about Flanders and how it makes them feel.

To catch people’s eye we wanted to have an interesting box by the bench. We could have bought one or got one made but seeing as it was lockdown and we had some time on our hands we decided to go for home made. At our NNR workshop we have loads of stored wood and fittings as you never know when the day might come when they could be used. And this was the day. So with the aim of making the box entirely out of reused and left over material wood was used from an old dismantled bridge from the other side of Flanders plus some old fence posts and a spare old step tread. The hinges were dug out of the bottom of a box with loads of saved odds and ends and the screws were either recycled from old rail fences or were left overs from the building of the viewing tower.

And the sign on the top of the box was carved using my Granddad’s old carving chisels.

So we hope you enjoy the box when you come across it on the contemplative spur and feel inspired to write some prose, or words, or poems, or rap or whatever in the bog book itself.