The long weekend (and an added day’s leave) saw me more in the woods than out. It was a weekend of peaks and troughs, which I’ll summarise here and expand on some aspects later.

On Friday afternoon I excitedly leapt into Doris the Land Rover Discovery with a 30 litre sack and enough provisions for 24 hours and hit Broaks Wood. I wanted to do some tracking in those woods and then move into Outfield Woods for the overnighter.

The tracking started well although I got a little side-tracked (!) into following an interesting pair of human boot marks. I followed those tracks for a good 500 yards on varying terrain before I completely lost them. I suddenly remembered why I was there and started to concentrate on the wildlife tracks. I knew there were Badgers in the area and I was hoping to ID and study their tracks. I wasn’t disappointed and found some prints near a small bridge. I was busy photographing and looking at the tracks when I spotted a Fallow doe (or rather she spotted me). The alarm bark went up and off she went. I left the Badger print and tried to follow the doe with absolutely no luck at all. It was from here everything started to go downhill.

I had purchased a belt rig (bum bag, fanny bag, call it what you will) with the sole intent of wearing it when tracking to dispense with the shoulder bag. I was surprised when I received it because of the wide back pad. I’ve worn belt rigs before and have found them cumbersome but this, although made out of soft material, was unbelievably uncomfortable. The width of the back pad meant if I wore it on or below the hips it kept slipping down and if I wore it above the hips, the thing came up to my chest! To top it all, when I tried to stow the tracking stick when I went after the doe the tip of the stick went straight through the thin material in the back pad. Hopeless.

As the afternoon wore on I realised that not only was the belt rig getting increasingly annoying but the rucksack was starting to bother me. I eventually put this down to too much weight in such a small bag. The rucksack wasn’t distributing the weight properly. This was me trying to be too clever I suppose. This, with the added problem of the belt rig (obviously I couldn’t use the rucksack’s hip belt) and I was starting to feel a little annoyed. I decided to call it a day at Broaks and move on to my overnight site.

At Outfield woods, I gratefully ditched the belt rig and wandered into the wood. Time was getting on and I was getting hungry. No sooner had I unpacked my food when I heard gunshots. And it was close. This was all I wanted. To top it all, the farmer on the north side of the wood decided to cut the field. What with the tractors and gunshots, I decided to bug out. This was not turning out to be such a good trip. Fearing “friendly fire” I found the only piece of orange kit I had on me, the Thermarest stuff sack, and tied it to the back of the rucksack and stepped boldly out of the wood.

Determined to salvage something out of the day, I moved into my local wood. Here I knew I wouldn’t be disturbed. At least I arrived without any further incidents although I was hot and bothered. I set up the tarp and hammock, again extracted my food and settled down to an uneventful night.

Saturday morning brought the usual cacophony of the Rooks with the added pleasure of them crapping all over my tarp. I wisely stayed under cover until they disappeared into the surrounding fields. I seriously debated going home, but the morning brought beautiful sunshine, so I moved into a sunnier part of the wood.

I decided to carve another spoon to try and relax. On this occasion I spent some time on it instead of my usual rush job. Two hours later and certainly more relaxed, I discovered that I had made probably the best spoon so far.

I’ll post events of the next 3 days on Wednesday.

See you then.

Pablo.

PS I’ve posted video about Nettles and cordage on Pablo’s Video page.