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Families had a fun time finding out about fossils at the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Learning Centre on Saturday – and a surprise visitor brought an even bigger smile to their faces.

Natural History Family Fun Day (30 pictures)

The centre was packed all day as mums, dads, and grandparents brought the kids along for a special family learning day linked to the Alan Titchmarsh TV series The British Isles: A Natural History.

The programme encourages viewers to explore the natural history wonders on their own doorstep and local geology enthusiast Alan McKay took family groups on the Gloucester Walk Through Time, a tour highlighting the ancient fossil treasures of the city centre that can be spotted in the buildings and paving stones, and that reveal clues to the regionÂ’s deep past.

Fascinating

Jean Tabor, who took the tour with her two grandchildren Kirsty and Helena said: “It was absolutely fascinating. I’ve walked round Gloucester thousands of times and I found out things about its past today that I never knew before. Even McDonalds is more interesting now!”

The day was organised in partnership with the Gloucestershire Geoconservation Trust who provided a team of experts to tell families all about the areaÂ’s fascinating natural history and the fantastic fossils that can be found in the county.

They also showed youngsters were shown how to make models of ammonites, trilobites and other prehistoric creatures in plaster that they could take home and paint. And every kid who joined made a fossil model was given a real fossil to take home.

Dave Owen of the Trust said: “All the kids seemed to have enjoyed themselves and we have been very busy. ItÂ’s great to see ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Gloucestershire encouraging such an interest in the natural world.”

Goodies

The ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Learning Centre team were on hand to show families a CD-Rom which showed them how to become ‘landscape detectivesÂ’ and every child who joined the walk received a ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Walk Through Time backpack with goodies including postcards, stickers, landscape detective guides and, very usefully, a plastic mac to cope with BritainÂ’s unpredictable climate!

Youngsters also had a chance to show their artistic side - there were dozens of entries for the day’s ‘design a dinosaur’ art competition – the winners will appear on this website soon.

And the centreÂ’s younger visitors were thrilled to see a surprise appearance by Pudsey Bear, who handed out details of the Children in Need camera competition launched this week and gave families advance notice that Gloucester would be at the very heart of the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ fundraising marathon on November 19, with a live pop concert at Gloucester Docks headlined by chart-topper Brian McFadden.

Find out more about the Gloucester Trail walk

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