Sensory  Trail at earth centre

The Sensory Trail was designed by Kijo Rokkkaku, and focuses on listening, touch and smell. The upper levels of the trail concentrate on hearing, and as you move down, the focus shifts from the wider landscape to more localised sounds.

Rokkaku Trail
This Japanese sensory trail was designed by Kijo Rokkaku, and is the only one outside Japan. It encourages visitors to use their senses of touch, smell and hearing. An underfoot path of different textures massages bare feet in the same way as a reflexologist might. Giant trumpets enhance sounds to allow visitors to hear the noises around them in a different way. Earth Centre's own special perfumes fill strange hooded shapes into which visitors can put their heads.

The heightened use of the senses can allow visitors to experience the world around them in whole new way.

Hearing with our ears

These are some really big ears and they make sounds much, much louder. They amplify the sounds that we can hear. Some animals have big ears to amplify sounds, for example, dogs, cats, rabbits, mice. These shell like devises amplify and isolate the sounds of nature to create intimate experiences.

These three listening devises required us to stretch into unusual positions in order to put our ear to the listening trumpets.

Feeling with our Feet

We can walk along the textured track in our bare feet. It is refreshing but a bit bumpy. It is like walking on the beach. It is really interesting and some of us think it is fun!

Smelling with our nose

These structures both possess perfumes and are shell-like acoustic features. One looks like a red metallic beetle and when you bend down and peer inside you should hear water dripping. It makes you concentrate and focus on the tiny sound, so your hearing becomes more acute.

In these different hoods, there are earth centre smells. We could smell pepper in one and some nice herbs in the other. We could smell mint and lemon. We thought the yellow hood was like at a hair dressers.