Our new collection was inspired by the beautifully illustrated children’s book ‘Where My Wellies Take Me’ by Michael Morpurgo.

The book follows a little girl, Pippa on her wandering walks through the beautiful Devon countryside with her favourite poems accompanying her. The book is part poetry, part anthology with poems from some of our greatest authors including Shakespeare, William Blake and Ted Hughes - just to name a few - personally chosen by Clare and Michael Morpurgo. It’s the first book they’ve created together so it holds great significance to both of them. The passion they have for the outdoors comes from their own childhood adventures growing up in the beautiful English countryside. We love the opening lines of the book: “Where are you off to, Pippa?” It’s what Aunty Peggy always asks me when I’m on my way out. “Wherever,” I tell her, with a shrug. “Where my wellies take me.”  The theme really resonated with us at Muddy Puddles as we truly believe that children should have the freedom to explore the outdoors by wandering walks in nature, learning about the world and themselves, improving their health, confidence, learning abilities and fulfilling their curiosity. As a business that believes every child is wild at heart, we are on a mission to make childhood magic in the great outdoors. The ‘Where My Wellies Take Me’ collection is designed to inspire children to leap into life. It draws on the whimsical illustrations from the book which we have applied as fun and colourful prints and colours on some of our new Autumn/Winter 2017 waterproofs.  The ‘Where My Wellies Take Me’ inspired prints include frogspawn, hoof and interstellar patterns that each have been created by our designers using Pippa’s stories from the book. The prints and colours in our collection are all reminders of her adventures stargazing, frog-spotting and her encounters with various new friends along the way. Farms for City Children Michael Morpurgo and his wife, Clare Morpurgo are also founders of the charity Farms for City Children. They’ve been running this project since 1976 to help city children experience life in the countryside. The programme involves children from urban primary schools spending a week at a countryside farm, during which they take part in purposeful farmyard work. The children are able to learn where their food comes from, how to look after farm animals and how to work in a team. They can take part in feeding livestock, grooming horses and donkeys, assisting at milking time, and working in the vegetable gardens, pressing apple juice and more and they can feel like real farmers.  At Muddy Puddles we’re really proud to take part in the project by donating waterproofs the children can wear while living on the farm. It is a requirement that they are totally protected from the elements while working on the farms so we provide full sets of waterproofs to the 3 farms that Farms for City Children run, enabling the children that come to visit each week to stay warm and dry.  All royalties Michael and Clare receive for every copy of the ‘Where My Wellies Take Me’ book will be donated to Farms for City Children.