A Long Time Coming

This post has been a long time coming!

Several years ago now, friends of mine set up the Bluebell Steiner Parent and Child Group in Barnstaple for pre-school children and their families. The group has gone from strength to strength, and over a year ago we started to look for somewhere to take the next step and set up a Steiner Waldorf school.

We explored so many different ways of approaching it. We, unlike may groups of parents who start these sorts of projects, are not well off. None of us had a convenient second home we could sell, or an inheritance we could invest. In fact, the most we could really do was make and bake to try to raise money through fundraising events.

We heard of a Kindergaten that was being run from a yurt in Cornwall, and that seemed to offer a far more realistic way of getting our own school off the ground. A second hand yurt was bought, and we began the endless and seemingly fruitless task of finding a suitable place to site it. It really did seem as though all roads were dead ends. Ideas that seemed really promising quickly fell on their faces, and all avenues seemed to lead to cul-de-sac's.

Until finally, one avenue didn't.

Welcome to the Two Rivers Steiner School!

We have been offered the use of an area of mixed deciduous and pine woodland at the back of Tapely Park, a large stately home that overlooks the estuary at Bideford. The location is brilliant as Bideford is within reasonable reach of Hartland where the Small School is located, and we have always felt that the Small School was the obvious next step for children leaving the school at 11.

We have been hard at work clearing the site, we have had a digger in to clear all the pine tree stumps and dig the compost loos, we have built the base for the yurt and are making good progress on the fencing. There has been so very much work and effort gone in already, and we still have a very long way to go, but it is really truly, earth and wood, sweat and mud, plans and fruition, happening!