Woodlife Trails

I returned from the Summer Bushmoot at Merthyr Mawr yesterday. A second 4-day excursion in as many weeks. (Lucky me eh?) I’m feeling quite tired now and it will be good to collect my thoughts on it all. So much for a more relaxed approach!

As with previous Bushmoots, this year’s event was excellent. The organisers did well, and despite the lack of a headliner like Mors Kochanski (last year) there was more than enough experience to run great workshops where you can’t help but learn and pick up tips even if you’re only watching.

A quick resume of the 4 days:

Friday – Arrived and set up. The evening was spent around the communal fire meeting people and having a good chat.

Saturday – Most of the day I was helping out with 2 tracking workshops. Thanks to Rod and Jon who let me help. To me this reinforced some of the learning from the Shadowhawk course last week. I also wandered round looking at the Wildspirit and Beyond 2000 areas (photos).

I picked up more tips about cordage and hunting with Hawks as well as looking at some great examples of primitive technology (Torjus – you would have loved it!)

Sunday – I sat in on half an axe workshop and also dropped into leather working and flint knapping although I didn’t participate. A rabbit skinning demo was also on the go. It was good to look at and identify diseased rabbits as well as the ‘good to go’s. The good ones (obviously) went into the hangi that evening.

That afternoon I sat in on the diamond honing workshop. I’m now a diamond honing convert (yes… I had to buy two diamond hones). I’ll write more about this in another post. I also (at last) learned the proper way to strop a knife with a leather strop.

A couple more knots were learned when dropping into the tarp workshop. Part of the evening was spent around the fire listening to “The Storyteller” after the excellent hangi.

Monday – More wanderings including the knife and battoning workshop and an excellent lecture and demo from Dr Rod (don’t know his real name – but he is a doctor) on Naturopathy and poultices. In the afternoon, my colleague Paul and I took a hike across the dunes to the coast and worked our way back to the site by following the river.

A great but tiring walk with some tracking on the way back. We were amazed at the amount of floatsam and jetsam washed up on the high tide line. A Bushcrafter’s foraging dream – except for the couple of dead sheep!

Tuesday – Pack away and drive back home.

Paul and I found a nice little area and shared a cooking fire. Paul brought along a fire bowl which, although heavy, worked well. We cooked every meal on it. Even though the weather turned fine (it only rained one evening and through one night), the dead wood was still quite damp and the Greenheat gel was put to good effect to start the fires! We used SA Trangia for quick brews – The annoying song of the moot was “Trangias in the Night”.

The DD hammock also worked well again. I tested the in-built mossy net version as well. I’ll do a review on both of them in a future post.

I achieved most of my aims at the moot. Even though I still haven’t cracked hand drill, I know the principles and look forward to practicing.

I was pleased to learn about knife sharpening from a knife-maker (Longstrider). This was definitely on my wish list. I now need to practice extensively, although the first tentative trials have worked ok.

I’ll go into a little more detail about the various workshops in future posts. I’d just like to say a big “Hi” to everyone I met and thanks for the kind comments about this blog. Thanks also to the organisers from BCUK who spent a great deal of time and effort organising and helping people out at the event.

I’ll post the second part of the Tracking course on Sunday. Until then, thanks for the visit.

Pablo.

PS I’ve just found two un-moderated comments that haven’t been published. Thanks Sailor for the High Seat comment and Anon re DDhammocks.