Learning Trail @ MacRitchie!!

Hi everyone, today I will be sharing about the sabbatical that I attended last term - "Learning Trail @ MacrRitchie"

In this sabbatical, students were showed around MacRitchie and were taught to appreciate the beauty of the reservoir. The main aim of this sabbatical was to teach students to become trainers themselves, and to be able to teach other people to appreciate the beauty of MacRitchie reservoir. This was under the Active Beautiful and Clean Waters Programme.

All in all, there were about 7 stations in the trail and the most interesting ones are the 2nd and last one. Also interesting was the hike up Bukit Timah Hill.


- A picture showing the journey up the hill


On the way up, we had to pass a small river. The river was crystal clear and it was probably one of the clearest bodies of water that I had ever seen in Singapore before, that is besides a swimming pool of course.


- Spot the Pond Skaters!

We learnt much about water diversity, about Pond Skaters, water pollution etc., from this small segment of the trip from our trainer.

Also, when we climbed up the hill to the tree-top walk, we had a magnificent view of Bukit Timah Hill. The mountain was was beautiful, with plenty of green and also a few species of animals. Those included monkeys, chameleons, colour-changing lizards, insects etc.


- Spectacular view of Bukit Timah Hill

So, what I have been describing just now was about the hike up Bukit Timah Hill. Now, I will be describing about the 7 stations, specifically the ones that I like most.

During the 2nd station, we took water samples from the reservoir and examined them. It was quite interesting and interactive. Too bad I did not take any pictures then D=

Equally interesting, however, was this sign.



It thought us about the importance of not feeding wild animals as it could harm them, as well as ourselves. This is because the animals might become dependent on humans to feed them, and cause them to lose the ability to find food and feed themselves.

One interesting thing that I have learnt from this sabbatical is about why PUB promotes kayaking at reservoirs. Most people might think that kayaking is only detrimental to the environment. However, most people have failed to look at it from a different direction. When a person goes kayaking for a long time, he will learn to treasure the waters around him. This in turn causes the kayaker to love nature even more and he/she will strive to save it. Thus, in this case, kayaking is good for the environment.

At the end of the day, I learnt that nature is something very precious to humans, and that we should all cherish it.