Pablo’s Woodlife

I had to be a bit careful. It was like walking on egg shells.

“Nope. There’s no snakes. Well, none that will harm you anyway.”

“Nope. There are no poisonous spiders.”

“That’s why you’re in a hammock. Nothing will crawl in your ears.”

“You’re exceedingly brave. I wouldn’t go shopping for that length of time.”

Mrs P has even been practicing her hammock drills. She will be in a DD Travel Hammock complete with “grub net”. (According to Mrs P, a grub is a creature with more than 4 legs).

She positioned her way into the hammock with all the concentration of someone whose life depended on this manoeuvre.

Mrs P will also have the Tatonka 3 x 3 tarp and a fleece blanket (she sleeps hot and doesn’t like to be confined in a sleeping bag.)

“I’m not sleeping on that dead animal either,” she said referring to my reindeer skin.

“What do I do with this?” she said looking at the orange whistle placed around her neck.

“You blow it if you get stuck.”

“What do you mean if I get stuck! Where would I get stuck? What sort of place is this that I would get stuck?”

My eyes went heavenward.

It started like this:

“We are invited to a birthday party. Do you want to go?”

“Party? Yes, I like parties. I’ll go.”

“It’s in the woods.”

Silence.

“Ok I’ll still go.”

I nearly fainted.

Since then she has been a bit quiet. She says she is looking forward to it, but she’s understandably nervous. A night in the woods – just imagine that.

“Nope. There are no wolves.”

To be fair, she’s already surprised me with her tracking skills. So what else lays behind that supposedly disinterested demeanour?

What will she do? How will she fair? Where will she plug in her hair dryer? How will she use her straighteners? Will she go at all? Will she become a bushcraft convert?

Tune in next week to find out.

Thanks for the visit.

At the kind invite of Les, I went to Prior’s Wood in Essex this weekend. I met my old mate John Scrivy and Les and Brett who are all instructors for Les’s Bushcraft and Survival School, Wildcrafts.

There was only one student this weekend, Trevor. The course was a general and gentle introduction to Bushcraft and included knife safety and use, fire lighting, water purification, natural shelter construction, wild food walk amongst others.

After setting up, Les showed me around the wood, which was a nice open and airy coppice woodland, with a newly constructed fishing lake on the outside of the wood. Judging by the tracks, there was a lot of activity in the woods with fallow and muntjac. There was also a lot of badger activity with a large latrine area. The lake attracted a number of visitors including this Grey heron seen on Sunday.

When Scrivy arrived it wasn’t long before the air rifles came out and we were happily pinging .22 pellets at a beer can target. You might think this was boy’s and their toys, but earlier I was introduced to a number of airsoft weapons (Les and Brett are airsoft champions) including a home made mortar. Now that was a big boy’s toy!! What a laugh!

The abundance of birch and the dry conditions made fire lighting easy and we soon had a fire on the go for a bit of food and the social. Plenty of mead, port, cider, and beer went round. The pic above shows something you don’t find too often. In fact we think it’s a pretty rare occurrence. It’s Crampball growing on birch.

Everyone went to to their bivis and hammocks with a smile although in the morning, the smile might not be so prominent as sore heads would inevitably kick in.

The next day, after a good breakfast, Les took Trevor through some knife safety, knife skill and sharpening and fire lighting…

… while Scrivy and I wandered over to the lake and dragged out some crayfish traps that Les and Brett had placed earlier. It was a terrific haul of crayfish, which would be cooked up for lunch. These are signal crayfish, a very aggressive and invasive species. Once caught it is illegal to put them back. What a shame. They have to be eaten!

After lunch Les, armed with his air rifle, and I went to try and find the Grey squirrel I had bumped into earlier. The squirrel (and his mate) certainly knew what we were about and gave us the runaround high in the tree canopy. Nobody could get a clear sight for a shot so we came back empty handed.

Pretty soon it was time to gather around the fire again. Trevor stayed in his well built debris shelter. We had been joined by Mark, also an old friend. The mead went round and round and some delicious pork chops and lamb steaks were covered in honey, barbequed on green sticks and devoured hungrily. Another great evening and I was kindly welcomed to the Wildcrafts fold.

Orthetrum cancellatum – Black-tailed Skimmer seen on the lake

After breakfast on Sunday we swapped out the airguns for an older form of weapon; the bow and arrow. I tried to set up what I thought was a clever shot with the video camera and Scrivy with equal cleverness nearly killed it with a well-placed shot no less than 8 inches below the camera itself! A lucky escape for the camera.

It wasn’t long before it was time to pack up. The weekend seemed to have flown by as there was so much going on. Even though I wasn’t a student I watched some of Les’s instruction with a professional eye and admired the easy way he imparted his vast knowledge of traditional bushcraft especially knowledge on wild flowers and fungi. I would recommend this short course to anyone wanting to experience a bit of bushcraft for the weekend.

Thanks for a great weekend, guys.

Pablo

I’ve wanted a proper kukuri (I know there are several ways of spelling it) for ages but I’ve been put off by looking at and handling inferior quality kukuris. Recently, I discovered and managed to get my paws on some kukuris designed and made by The Kukuri House in Nepal and was impressed by the quality of the workmanship. I now had no excuses for not trying them out.

Being an awkward customer, I didn’t fancy one of the many, many kukuris available on their site and decided to have mine custom made but based on a design I liked, which the folks in Nepal happily agreed to do and at no extra cost.

I elected to base my design on the AngPana Jungle (Ang + Khola; having fuller in blade) and Panawal (Full flat tang with rivets). I wanted an 8 inch blade so as not to be too obtrusive (the original is a massive 12 inch blade) but keep the original 5 inch handle. I also wanted the green and black Dap (scabbard) therefore this would have to be custom made as well.

It arrived on Monday, only a couple of days after the 14 day stated time (which was great for a custom kukuri being shipped all the way from Nepal.) I was kept informed of progress all the way from order acceptance to shipping , which is a great credit to the company.

The item was well wrapped and soaked in oil. The convex blade would need a bit of work but it was still pretty sharp. The first thing that struck me was the weight. This is a hefty old thing and doesn’t even compare it to my leuku in this area.

My thoughts are to use this as a camp chopper (like the leuku) in lieu of an axe and have an additional smaller knife; but will I end up carrying this instead of the leuku?  Perhaps unfairly I will make direct comparisons because this is the reason for me carrying these larger blades.

I automatically started handling the kukuri like the leuku with the hand right back near the pommel. This was a mistake as the pommel is pointed in the vertical plane and dug into my hand. I would have to hold it further up the handle. I would also have to adapt my style of handling quite considerably. The leuku requires wrist actions; this monster would sprain your wrist if you tried to use it like that!

I couldn’t see this being used for delicate work at all. With the leuku, I could at least do a little bit of carving. This was more in the axe league, but could it replace an axe? I can’t answer this one at the moment as with the many other questions going through my mind.

It is definitely a well made tool although it won’t win any prizes in the looks department.  The unpolished buffalo horn handle obviously looks as though it has been modified to fit the new blade length (as per my request) and wasn’t exactly pretty, but it was solid as with the rest of the kukuri. The flat tang showed on the top and bottom of the handle in the Panawal style.

The Dap was well made and the green leather and black frog suited the kukuri well, although the handle might be a little top heavy. On the belt, the kukuri tends to lean forward and outward, another result of it being customised. Mmmm… perhaps I shouldn’t have customised it so much!

The steel is “raw” (unpolished) as requested and gives the kukuri a business like appearance as opposed to some highly polished and decorative kukuris. The cutting edge shape appears to be just the right one for general chopping use. As the description says, “…The curvature will also give much needed support to the flat surface by evenly distributing the impact force created when striking …” All this remains to be seen after a bit of use.

I’ve only had the chance to have a quick chop at some old but thick wood. As you would expect this works it’s way through anything that comes in its path with a similar effect to that of an axe but of course without the additional power that the axe handle generates from the swing. Power? Yes, but can it do the delicate jobs expected of a leuku or is this kukuri destined just to become another member of the axe family?

Only time will tell.

I went to Lowt’s wood for the first time in eight months. I haven’t been there before now because it’s quite a walk in and most of the wood is accessible only by climbing a steep slope. Having said that, it’s one of my favourite woods. It’s very quiet and despite being unmanaged, it looks nice.

I crept into the wood in case there was some Fallow deer about, but on this occasion there wasn’t. I meandered my way along the lower level and then climbed the steep slope to the higher parts of the wood. I stopped on the west side for a bit of lunch.

It was quiet with only a few birds and the distant mewing of a Buzzard. My lunch was bacon and eggs with beans cooked in the primus frying pan on my Optimus crux stove amongst the seeding heads of the spent Bluebells.

I took the opportunity to sort out my utility bag. I’m now carrying it in a drop bag so I can just put it any one of my rucksacks I take out with me.

After a bit of lunch I went to the south side of the wood and out into the field. The sun had come out and I was immediately attracted to the hedgerow where numerous insects had settled in the blazing heat.

Despite wanting to do a small carving project, I was kept fascinated by the comings and goings of the various insects, dragonfly and butterflies.

I spotted this Painted-lady speeding it’s way across the field and eventually it settled on the hedgerow. These come all the way from Africa. Apparently, they arrived in their thousands in May.

The dragonflies were represented by a single Common blue.

I spotted two types of caterpillar, the peacock butterfly (above) and large white butterfly.

The day ended with the usual snooze amongst the leaf litter back on the lower part of the wood before I headed home.

Thanks for the visit.

Pablo.

The temperature went up into the low twenties centigrade this weekend in the East of England with bright sunshine. There was an air of expectancy as I made my way into Poor Park woods on Saturday.

Watching wildlife is like playing golf – not that I play myself, but I hear it all the time from my old man. You can employ all the tricks you know and you can even be a good player, but when you have a bad day, you certainly have a bad day. All your shots seems to land in the bunker.

I came up with a big fat zero as far as photographing anything interesting and eventually had to content myself with photographing snails and bugs.

After a while I started to get fascinated with the macro world, but inexperience showed as most of the photos came out blurred.

Sunday, and I was up with the larks and heading off to Broaks wood. I wanted to get some more video footage of the dragonflies.

I saw the usual suspects; Four-spotted chasers, Small reds, Azures, and Broad-bodied chasers. I also saw a one of the hawkers (difficult to ID on the wing) and a Banded-demoiselle although I couldn’t get any footage of the last two. They were just too quick for me and wouldn’t settle.

I realised that the idea of this next big High Definition production with dragonflies as the subject isn’t going to be as easy as I thought. In fact, I think it’s going to take me a good couple of  months to capture what I really want to show and make it worthwhile.

I was contemplating this in a state of melancholy sitting on a log before heading back to the car. I had spent the best part 2-days and all I had to show was blurred bugs and dodgy dragonflies. Then I looked up…

A Muntjac doe about 20 yards away. Hole in one!!

Thanks for the visit.

Pablo.

Billy is 4 today. You know who Billy is don’t you? He’s made a guest appearance in a couple of posts.

To celebrate his birthday, here’s a couple of facts about him.

1. Billy is a Bichon Frise (pronounced Bee-shon free-zay) which means “curly lap dog.” They are descended from the water spaniel or Barbet.

2. Billy has visited often. He came to stay with us for a long weekend in January and hasn’t left.

3. Billy sleeps on our bed.

4. Billy doesn’t go bushcrafting. He’s not a bushcrafting dog. He’s not keen on the rain, he’s got a white coat and he chases rabbits; but he does go out with Pablo for long walks in the fields. Note his crusader cup and a container of cocktail sausages.

5. Their place of origin is the Mediterranean where they went to sea as sailors’ companions. The sailors often sold them to Spanish and Italian aristocratic families where they became lap dogs. They still remain good swimmers.

6. They also made good street performing and circus dogs because of their uncanny sense of balance and agility. They are very robust little dogs.

7. Billy taught himself to pirouette dance on his back feet (a throw-back to one of his ancestors no doubt) thinking he will get a cocktail sausage when he does it.

8.  Billy gets a sausage when he pirouette dances.

9. Billy’s toy box contains 9 bones, 4 old shoes, 3 empty lemonade bottles, a tennis ball, a red nose, a pink hippo and a number of soft toys. The empty lemonade bottles are particularly annoying when Billy plays with them. Bichons don’t normally retrieve, but Billy does.

10. Bichons are known to run around the house at top speed now and again, barking and growling at everything . This is known as a “Bichon Buzz” or “Bichon Blitz” and is very entertaining to watch although you should protect breakable objects!

11. Billy has a pedigree. That’s why we know it’s his birthday. He gets offended when people call him a poodle.

12. Pablo said after Ben the Labrador passed away that he wouldn’t have any more dogs.

13. Billy likes going to the pub now and again where he has his own chair. People give him crisps and pork scratchings.

14. Billy doesn’t molt. He goes to the hairdresser every 6 months for a hair cut.

15. Mrs P get annoyed when Billy rolls in fox crap.

16. Pablo is the alpha male, but Billy is devoted to Mrs P. He will watch out the window when she’s due home.

17. Bichons get upset when the person to whom the dog is devoted doesn’t pay them enough attention. Billy steals stuff from Mrs P’s handbag and leaves it around the house to gain attention.

18. Pablo is still wondering how he came to be the owner of a white Bichon Frise. He suspects it was a family conspiracy.

19. Pablo doesn’t really like small dogs as you can tell.

20. Billy is now asleep. He is tired after his birthday party.

(Please note: Some of these photos were taken without permission with a mobile phone camera)