Woodlife Trails

During the week I took delivery of a Katmandu tarp and Swedish Army Trangia. I spent an evening reacquainting myself with a couple of knots. I tried a couple of new ones like the Evenk figure of 8. Of course, all very good in a nice warm room with no wind! At least I had a chance to rig up the tarp with the paracord.

Even though the North Easterly wind was freezing, I had to go out and test out the tarp and Trangia. I started building a normal day shelter. The wind was blowing the thing everywhere, and I was surprised at just how lightweight they were compared to the tarps I’d used in the Army. Without taking off, I managed to control the ridge line enough to tie the two ends to the tree and then to peg down the two corners. Without pausing, I took it down to try the same shape shelter, but this time using bugees I’d brought along. There seems a split vote between using bungees and using a fixed rope ridgeline. I thought that the bungees allowed the centre line of the tarp to sag. I also considered that after a while, the bungee would wear because of the rubbing against the tree bark. Therefore the rope and ridge line gets my vote. The knots I settled on were the midshipmans and the Evenk. I did attach the edges of the centre ridgeline tarp by a small karabiner. This gave a nice taught ridgeline. I also used the bungees to make the shelter roof straighter.

I tried two other styles before I left the shelter up. One was a tree-to-tree bivvi using basha pole and a “no tree” bivvi (again just using the basha pole). I was quite pleased with these as well. After a couple more shelters (just to practice the knots) and as it was so cold, I left the final attempt up and got down to the business of a serious brew! Best time to get up the shelter was 5 minutes. Not bad I suppose in a high wind and wearing gloves.

Using the new Swedish Army Trangia (SAT) I timed brewing 1litre of water. It took 13 minutes, which I thought was pretty good in this temperature. Okay, it wasn’t freezing, but not that warm either. What did surprise me was that it’s not as flammable as I thought. You have to hold the match to the meths for a while (or is it me?) A good brew warmed me up and I can quite understand how making a brew improves moral when in survival situations. Full course meal next!!

The shelter and brew made things quite comfortable and it was only the 6 Nations rugby that made me return home. As England lost…I should have stayed out there!!