Peak District children are growing up without knowing what a stile is, while others don't know where eggs come from according to national park chiefs who want to educate the public about the countryside.

The admissions were made by Peak District National Park Authority members during a discussion of the National Parks for Everyone paper, which aims to make green spaces more accessible to the wider public.

Addressing the Programmes and Resources Committee, Councillor David Taylor said: “A lot of children spend most of their time looking at a computer rather than looking at the countryside. 

He added: “I’ve heard children say they don’t know where eggs come from.

“A relative of mine didn’t want to have eggs from our hens because they came out of hens, they wanted them out of Morrisons.”

Councillor Peter Tapping commented: “It’s surprising how little the school children actually know about the countryside around them or know anything about the Peak park.

“The children from my local school went out for a walk across the fields and in a school of 30, six of them didn’t know what a stile was because they’d never walked across the fields.

“A lot of the village schools are very, very isolated and they don’t see what’s going on around them.”

The authority has been working on the Generation Green project, designed to give children and young people access to high quality learning resources about Peak District, as well as the oportunity to visit and stay.

Lorna Fisher, project manager for Generation Green, said: “This is the start of someone’s journey, these are the people who don’t know what a stile is – haven’t seen a sheep before.

“It’s that inspirational activity. It’s that little thing that plants the seed for their budding journey into the outdoors.”

To that end, the authority is working with partner organisations including the YHA England and Wales, Scout and Guide associations, The Outward Bound Trust and Field Studies Council.

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