Pablo’s Woodlife

After arriving at the yard and being transported by Mark’s ‘Bush-taxi’ I considered the potentially hazardous and undulating final 100 yards into the camp. I needn’t have worried. Adam and Mike had built a bridge over the largest ditch for me to step across complete with handrail. With mates like that you just know that you will be in safe hands for the rest of the weekend. I named the bridge ‘Pablo’s Pass’ as a genuine lump came to my throat.

We settled into a routine of collecting wood and sawing it up ready for the cold, cold night that was expected. We discussed how short the days were and how much work you have to do while there was still some daylight to work by. It certainly helps to have a group of people to share the work.

I had brought both hammock/tarp and tipi; but I wanted to try out the tipi in anger. I was still unsure of sleeping on the ground but I had to give it a go. The others’ had a mixture of bivis with tarps and hammocks with one other tipi dweller. No one had a really uncomfortable sleep, but it was only -4C and warm compared with what the following night would bring.

On Saturday, after a leisurely breakfast, we had a Woodlife Network AGM as all 5 of the management team happened to be there. We then got stuck into some individual tasks. Mike making a buck saw, Sean having a go at bow-drill, George making a northern shelter, Mark helping everyone out, Ben spoon-making and me trying to make an oil lantern (I’ll put up the manufacturing stages later).

Again, we had to prepare copious amounts of wood for the stew and for a long fire for later in the evening.

The stew was a fantastic beef stew and dumplings prepared by Mark and Andy. As the temperature dropped, we discussed different methods of keeping warm. Insulation both in terms of clothing and insulation from the cold ground were the first obvious steps. And of course hot food and a hot drink. Before we turned in we planned to make hot water bottles from our water containers to pre-heat our sleeping bags. Alcohol probably isn’t the best thing to keep warm; nevertheless, a few kuksas full of different substances were passed around.

Every now and again, someone would race up to check the temperature. It was -6C at 8 o’clock and depending on where you were on the slope, it plummeted to -10C  later in the evening.

The morning saw the condensation on the inside of my tipi frozen and a thin layer ice on the outside of it. Despite this I felt no ill affects waking only once during the night. My new Alpkit SkyHigh 800 and thermarest provided all the warmth (I’ll do a full review later) and apart from the condensation problem, I was pleased with the tipi/sleeping bag combination.

Andy and Maverick had Exped SynMat 7s, which are very worthy considerations for ground-dwellers (although a bit pricey.) George comfortably survived his night in his northern shelter. In fact nobody felt any ill affects from the cold weather although on this occasion there was little wind chill to take into consideration.

All in all this was another great weekend with great company and a challenging cold weather scenario. Thanks to everybody there for making it a great first post-injury excursion for me.

Thanks for the visit.

Pablo.

Posted by Pablo at 12:30 0 comments

There’s no getting away from it. It’s in the news. In fact it’s never out of the news. Not just the usual doom and gloom about Britain not being able to cope. But  we are now (apparently) in the middle of a Great Freeze like the ice-age. This is exacerbated by no funding, bad governmental leadership, poor local council contingency planning, lack of salt supplies for the roads, the wrong type of snow, idle work-force that can’t be bothered to even try to get into work – but they seem to be able to crowd out the supermarkets and decimate the shelves of milk and bread and even the fact that someone’s sold most of our snow-ploughs!! Britain at it’s best! But things aren’t dire yet. That’s when we Brits really pull together… don’t we?

In Pablo’ world, I’ve also failed to plan. At home we’ve nearly run out of heating oil and I doubt the supply will get through next week, but at least I have a contingency plan. I have a gas heater. If that fails, we’ll go to the woods. It seems I can cope better there.

I was out for 7 hours on Saturday. This is a tracker’s paradise and I can’t get enough! I was busily studying some squirrel tracks when, no more than 10 yards away, a pair of foxes ran past me. That was just an insult and a challenge! They weren’t going to get away with that, so I urged my cold legs into action and ran after them.

They split up, one going towards the village while the other went into the wood. Instead of following the tracks, I kept to the main path and tried to run parallel with the fox, catching glimpses of him going through the thick undergrowth.

After a couple of close approaches, I finally gave up when the fox saw something of particular interest and bolted towards it out of sight.

This was a good opportunity to have some lunch. I had brought my bushbuddy and a trangia meths stove for my bacon and eggs. The stove fits inside the bushbuddy perfectly and, of course, you can still use the bushbuddy with natural fuel if you run out of meths.

Returning to meths was a good plan in this weather as long as the burner is warmed up prior to use. I also lit a small fire to keep my legs warm.

I was accompanied by a robin who was intrigued by the whole lunch thing. In return, I made sure his tiny tracks were firmly filed in my database.

Like the other week, I combined the woods trip with a walk around the fields. I’m not too sure how long this white stuff will last so I’m taking every opportunity to look at the tracks.

Fox and rabbit tracks are absolutely everywhere and in another post I’ll try to describe them in depth in respect of different gaits and behaviour. This squirrel print deserves particular study as, with badger and deer tracks, there weren’t too many about.

I’ll just finish this post on a comment about winter clothing. I’m not experimenting this year. I’m still using the Woolpower base layer, thin fleece middle layer and Mad Dog Silent Shadow coat (when tracking) and SASS ventile jacket for bushcraft. This keeps me warm enough but I will put on another mid-layer (Natural Fibre Clothing Company shirt – above) if it really gets cold (There’s a video review of this new wool alternative to Swandri  shirt on my YouTube channel).

These North Face Cedar Ridge boots have been superb so far. Even during prolonged periods in the snow they have been faultless keeping my feet dry and warm as well as exceedingly comfortable.

The hat I’m wearing above I purchased from my local fishing tackle shop (£9-99)

Stay warm.

Pablo.

A lot of people are bemoaning the quality (or lack of) and unavaiblability of Swandri shirts. So here’s a video review of a British made alternative, the Gruinard shirt from the Natural Fibre Clothing Company in Wales. Certainly worth considering.