Pete Moore - Director of Forest & Beach
Pete Moore - Forest & Beach
Where are you?
We’re in Beeson, half a mile from the sea at Beesands (click here for details)
What do you do at Forest and Beach?
We offer lots of different outside experiences, including school residential camps, holiday activity clubs and days in the woods and on the beach. We’re all about getting children experiencing nature at first hand.
We also teach Forest School skills in local schools and run ‘out of office’ days in the woods for larger companies, including cooking outside, learning to light fires and a bit of friendly competitive archery.
We hire out our venue for different events, including weddings, and also co-organise the annual Dad Fest with the Dangerous Dads charity.
How did it all begin?
My wife Andrea and I are both experienced primary school teachers, although I’m full-time at Forest and Beach now. We were interested in the Forest School approach and getting children out into nature.
The Underwood Discovery Centre at Beeson became available so we went for it and started Forest and Beach in 2013 as a social enterprise.
There wasn’t a huge plan, and it was a risk, but certain things miraculously just came into play and it started to work out.
Timing is just right to start such a business – nowadays, children aren’t roaming outside and accessing nature due to parental fears stoked up by media, mixed with increasing use of computers and other screens.
We began with children’s birthday parties in the woods. They became popular and got people interested in Forest and Beach.
Did the whale sightings around Start Bay last year help put you on the map?
Definitely! It was amazing – we had the whale, porpoises, dolphins, gannets and seals all around the coast at the time. It was like The Blue Planet down here. We’d always posted sightings of wildlife on our Facebook page and now we were getting people clicking on from all over the place.
Over the seven weeks the whale was here, our Facebook page had about 1,000 new ‘likes’ and our postings on the whale were being shared and reaching up to 50,000 people. We were getting calls from all over the country about the sightings, and then getting more enquiries about what we do at the centre.
More recently I filmed a storm at Beesands and that post reached up to 90,000 people, many from followers who must have joined during the whale sightings.
What else have you spotted along the coast?
In Start Bay a few years ago I saw a sunfish the size of a dustbin lid. And a few years ago at Slapton I thought I saw a seal nose pop up about 20 metres off shore. There was a big exhale of air and, just as that happened, the back of a shell rose up and I realised it was a leatherback turtle. It was incredible, its shell was at least two metres long. It must have been following the jellyfish blooms.
When I was younger and working at South Sands you could nearly always guarantee seeing basking sharks following the plankton blooms on Salcombe Bar. They seem to have gone south to Cornwall but there are still lots of dolphins around Salcombe. And at Pear Tree Point you can see lots of seals hanging around at sunrise in October. There’s always a chance of seeing a porpoise or something else, the wildlife around here is amazing.
Do you have a Desert Island disc?
While I was whale watching here last year I listened to Pete Tong’s album Classic House with the Heritage Orchestra - such great memories.
How long have you been here?
We both grew up in the South Hams in the 80’s, with lots of freedom outdoors.
Andrea and I went to Kingsbridge School. I lived in Kingsbridge, Torcross and Hope Cove and Andrea’s parents farm at East Allington. As children, Andrea would be out hacking on her horse and I would be out on my bike having mini adventures with friends.
Our two children Milly and Sam were still at primary school when we opened Forest and Beach and have grown up being outdoors. They still help out, especially at Forest Days.
What’s your favourite thing about running Forest and Beach?
Seeing the children enjoying the environment and loving relatively simple stuff. If children don’t know about nature they can’t protect the environment in the future. During our residentials I’m out from 6am to midnight but I love helping children enjoy and understand the environment, it’s so rewarding.
Everyone is encouraged to play here. Playing in the natural environment is valued as much as learning to shoot an arrow.
What are your plans for the future?
We’re looking to encourage small businesses to join up and enjoy a day together in the wild. Whenever children are dropped off here, lots of the adults tell me they’d love to do the activities. This gave us the idea of doing more for adults. So far we’ve created days for bigger businesses but it would be good to allow smaller ones to come along together and enjoy a day in the woods and on the beach.
First published in The Post magazine August 2018