Geology walk, Buckingham

Thank goodness I sometimes remember that this blog is dedicated to chronicling an alternative education, albeit one occasionally subtitled Four Go Mad in the Land of Learning. It means I can gratefully dump my stream-of-conscious monologue post - what-can-you-wear-at-funerals-if-you-don't-believe-in-Victorian-black - and  instead file a rambling post about how I have done the gritlets proud with yet another educational walk from the excellent geologists round Buckingham town centre.

Our local geologists prove once again how you don't need a classroom or a tick sheet of learning objectives to impart wisdom and enthusiasm, and we prove once again that slow learners are everywhere. I am sure we have been asked those questions about dinosaurs at least two hundred times before and we still get the answers wrong. But because the lovely geologists are gentle, kind people with infinite patience, no-one beats us around the head with a book or holds up the walk to put us in detention. There is strangely no humiliation in making a hash of knowledge, either. On jaunts like this, we have no one to prove anything to, except ourselves, and if we are happy jogging along going ooh at fossils, then so be it.

My only regret about this most excellent day is that I forgot the camera. It lay on its back on the kitchen table, its closed eye shut to the ceiling and blind to the delights of Buckingham building stone. So I can't show you the granite, the limestone, or the enormous ammonite under the shop front window. You'll just have to believe me. It's truly enormous. Hunt it down next time you're in town and go careful round the dinosaur.