It started about 3am on Thursday. A not very pleasant experience of 6 hours sickness and diarrhoea. The longer term effects after that quick spell of nastiness was headaches, tiredness and aching limbs.

It making its way around the UK. There’s no cure but no lasting effects and, of course, with any thing like this you have to keep hydrated. If you need more information on the Norovirus, click here.

Despite feeling a little weak, I decided that a little woods therapy might be in order and I promised Les, Brett and John at Wildcrafts that I would help out; so I packed light and drove down the road to the site.

Not long after I arrived, Les showed the 8 youngsters how to skin a roe deer, and we soon had the carcass on the spit ready for the evening meal.

There was some success with this, but the damp conditions and damp wood weren’t really conducive to a perfect meal, but there was certainly enough for a taster.

I travelled quite light (for once) and had the small tarp and DD scout hammock. My cooking kit was the crusader mug and that, basically, was it. Amazing what you can get down to if you really want to.

After watching Les and Brett skilfully guide the kids through some basic bushcraft skills, we sat back and relaxed by the fire.

After a surprisingly comfortable night, despite an early biting northerly breeze, it was my turn to put the lads through their paces with an introduction to tracking. They started to work well as a team to find the “escaped prisoner” in the allotted time-scale, despite the frustratingly ankle deep muddy conditions.

Despite this being a  short session it’s always gratifying to see people enjoy it. For the youngsters it’s like a grown up hide and seek and for the accompanying adults (who I noticed eagerly joined in) it was an eye-opener to discover that they could read tracks with a minimum of guidance. The mud helped and the badger and deer tracks stood out well, so we were able to look at the wildlife side as well.

I left the site at lunch-time more tired than when I left home, but it was still worth the effort to introduce a dozen or so more people to the world of tracking.

Thanks to Les, Brett and my mate John. Also to new faces, Simon and Andy and their brilliant camp-fire tales of biking-rally shenanigans! Hilarious. (Nearly forgot hi to Scout the dog!)

Till next time.