Pablo’s Woodlife

I started out by going into the woods to test out my new Trangia and practice some skills. I set up both the Swedish Army (SA) Trangia and the Trangia 27. They both performed well, but I couldn’t help thinking that despite the 27’s refined looks, the SA Trangia was still my favourite. I had bought additional accessories with the 27 like the small 0.6 litre kettle (which is great) a non-stick pan and hard plastic “multi disk”. This made the weight as heavy as the SA Trangia. I decided that I would use the 27 for longer expeditions or when I wanted to do fancy cooking (as opposed to beans and sausages from a tin!) I would use the SA Trangia for smaller or “Bushcraft” excursions. Now have I got room for that kettle?!

I was just finishing off a brew when my wife called to say she would be going to her friends. This meant she would be staying over as a trip to the friend usually involved a bottle of wine. Okay, this was it then. No excuses. I had enough food, water, two cooksets (!) sleeping bag and hammock. It was time to stay out in the woods. What follows is a short account in log form taken from my hard copy journal.

3pm – This is it then. Let’s get organised. Gathered firewood. Decided to start fire later and at least boil water as opposed to cooking by Trangia. Gathered various sizes from kindling to larger wood. Should have enough tinder from birch bark gathered earlier.

4.15pm – Made a quick spoon and billy rests. I’m finding that I’m using the folding saw more than any other tool now. I also carry the crook knife in my shoulder bag as a matter of course. Much easier to fashion a spoon. After this, I had a rest and listened to the sounds of the wood. Mostly *** crows!

This was followed by a walk to take pictures of woodland and field flowers. Ragged Robin; Greater Stitchwort; Birds-foot Trefoil; Common Vetch. Saw Scorpionfly, Cardinal beetle and orange-tip butterfly.

8pm – Having trouble with the fire. Managed to light tinder and kindling, but wood too damp. Should’ve cut though outer layer to get to dry insides. Constantly blowing to maintain flame. Failure. Gave up with fire. Time to light Trangia. Tinned Baked beans with sausages, soup and 2 x apples. Comfortable and feeling good despite fire failure.

9.30pm – Preparing for dark and badger watch. Re-tied hammock; laid out foam mat with sleeping bag on top. Covered with excess from hammock in case of rain when away. Tidied site and memorised position of everything. Tied two small bungees to trees. Collapsible bowl and ration bag hooked to one and utility bag on the other. Tested Tikka XP light with red filter. Swapped bush-hat for fleece hat and stuffed bivvi bag into shoulder bag ready for a long wait on damp grass. Started the 10 min walk to badger sett.

11.30pm – Heard the badgers about 6 feet to my left. Very dark and can’t see them at all. The bank has overgrown so much since last visit. Wind getting up and going in the wrong direction. Using red light to scan the area now and again. Still no sign. Time to go. Easy first part of the walk as it’s a track. No need for red light. Actually going into the wood is quite difficult. Very damp and slippery. Down a slight hill and…Straight on my a***e. No harm done. No injuries. Despite the red light, I missed my site by about 10 yards, but quickly realise I’ve gone wrong. Contemplated white light, but no need. Red light reflected off the Trangia kit.

1215 am – After a cup of tea, clambered into the sleeping bag (not so slippery with the foam mat on the hammock). Zip is rubbish or is it because it’s new? Damp socks off and laying next to trouser legs, fleece as a pillow. 10 minutes of wonderful peace and stillness and then…

3.15 am – Woke up cold. Can’t be less then 12 degrees C. Sleeping bag said comfortable to -10 degrees. What a joke! It was a cheapy however. Not really too uncomfortable though. Dozing off again, then it starts. Barking deer. 20 minutes later it stops. So much for a peaceful night! Eerie false dawn. What a fantastic place.

5 am – Woke up again. Cold. Wind seems to have got up. Quite comfortable in the hammock though.

7.30 am – The sun is up, but outside of the wood. Wide awake now and wanting to do the normal things one does first thing in the morning. Time to get up. There’s a chill in the air, so on goes the fleece and neck scarf. This is what sleeping in the wood is all about. A wonderful picture of green with the sun coming through the trees; the smell of fresh vegetation and a deep sense of peace.

With the morning ablutions over, I wash using the collapsible bowl. What a great purchase this was. No need to shave – in built face warmer! Breakfast is a banana and fresh milk saved from yesterday. 2 x cups of coffee. How’s the water situation? 1 litre left for the rest of the day out of a total of 3 1/2.

After breakfast, I went through the woods again, to do some more tracking. I tidied the site, packed up and made my way to the van. I gratefully dumped the pack and climbed in the van exactly 24 hours after I originally left it.

I felt as though I had achieved something significant. Of course I’d slept out before, but always under canvass (ie tent). This is probably why I didn’t even want the tarp up. It was a great feeling being part of the wood. I still think that I can cut down on some kit, and I was really disappointed about the fire, but that will be something for another time. Nothing will detract from the feeling of being a first time true “tree dweller”. As I looked over to the passenger side, I noticed that my wife had driven out and left me a blanket on the seat! You can’t beat that sort of support!

Not the best picture in the world but you can see the wilting undergrowth as the drought in England continues. About two months without significant rain. The pathways through the woods are clearing and the tracks are now clearly visible again.

There’s very little animal or bird movement in the woods. It seems everyone is suffering from the heat…except me. Here I am still making sure everything is ready for this weekends Bushmoot. By the way, a moot is an old English word for meeting.

I’ve tried a full kit load out and modified the rucksack. I’ve also completed the best way to tie up the tarp, hammock and insect netting. So everything is just about ready. I’ve tried out some of the food I’m taking. I was quite surprised to find a lack of ‘instant’ foods when I went shopping. I want to eat well but not lumber myself down with heavy tins. All I managed to find was dehydrated pasta meals and instant soups. It looks like a trip to the camping store to find some decent grub is in order. I did find some instant porridge that I tried out this weekend. It was surprisingly tasty even though it was made with water and not the recommended milk.

The last task this weekend was to try out the Crusader cup over a fire. I lit the fire by firesteel and tinder and kept the fire small. It took about 15 minutes to come to the boil (about 1/2 litre). There was an ulterior motive to doing this. Well…you can’t go to a Bushmoot with new shiny kit can you?

After a few weeks of rain, the sun has suddenly made what is probably one of the last of its strong appearances this summer. The temperature is back up in the high twenties centigrade and a good opportunity for some more bushcraft in the woods. I went light this week with only my rucksack containing the Swedish Army Trangia and some food. I didn’t need the Trangia after all as I decided to build a small fire to cook up the beans and sausages and brew of tea.

The fire lighting with fire steel and birch bark as tinder was a success and soon I had a good lunch on the go.

I used my small folding sit mat (a new purchase and pictured in the photo) for the first time. This is a good cheap addition to my kit. So often I’ve sat down on damp ground and regretted it. This sit mat is light and folds up quite small.

After lunch, I decided to make a few simple tools including a tri-pod stand for the rucksack, and another rough spoon. The tri-pod reminded me to practice my lashings as this attempt wasn’t too successful. It did the trick for this occasion though. I realised on the bushmoot that you don’t always need expensive paracord for everything and most of the instructors had balls of cheap nylon string or ordinary twine. Great for small jobs where strength isn’t a necessity.

I walked to the outskirts of the woods a watched the dragonflies again. I realised that, like the strong sun, there wouldn’t be many more occasions this season when I would be able to view them. I spotted a couple of the large Emperors (again, too swift for a photo) and a pair of Large Reds coupling and ovipositing on the wing. Apparently, this is the only species of dragonfly in the UK that do this, and I was pleased to get a picture. The warm sun brought out a few butterflies and I spotted a Red Admiral amongst the blackberries on the wood edge.

A great day for wildlife finished with a low swooping fly-past of firstly a Sparrowhawk and then a Greater Spotted Woodpecker, with a Kestrel hovering in the distance

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All seemed peaceful with the world as I laid out in the sun and soaked up the warmth of the late summer. I felt I had to go back into the wood and do something else, but it was just too nice and I drifted off to sleep listening to the sound of the insects.

As I said in the previous post, I spent some time looking at cooksets this weekend and especially the new Pocket Cooker which arrived last week. It was advertised on Ebay as a ‘second’ at half price, but arrived with no visible sign of damage or fault.

The size is definitely ‘pocket’ although the weight isn’t. It’s really surprisingly heavy. The purple case has a belt loop, but the weight would probably pull your trousers down! The hinge mechanism at one side of the cooker allows it to be folded away. The other side isn’t hinged and held on merely by a small split ring, which might not stand up to any rugged use. With care though, I think the whole thing would last, as long as you cleaned and dried it after use. It seems as though it would be quite prone to rust.

Setting it up doesn’t take long and after finding appropriate fuel (it’s described as a wood burner) you can load up and fire it up. This didn’t seem to be a problem. I did find that initially it’s easier to load the fuel from the top of the cooker as opposed to through the hinged door at the front, this entrance being a little small. Once alight, you can load additional fuel from the front, but as stated it is a bit awkward because of the small size. You can use this door to vary the airflow and draw or dampen the fire. The ground clearance from the base of the cooker is very small, and it will scald the surface of whatever you place it on, but it does provide airflow.

The trick to the whole thing is keeping the cooker alight. Unlike an open fire or fire bowl, you haven’t got a lot of room to manoeuvre in order to keep it alight. But with the right materials, you can boil a mug full of water or heat food in no time, and of course get that nice wood smell. The unit cools down quickly after use and you can pack it away quickly.

Where and in what circumstances would I use it? Mmmm…good question. It’s fun to use and I was more impressed than I thought I’d be. I wouldn’t use it over a SA Trangia as a matter of course. Some areas don’t allow open fires and it’s probably here that I would bring it along if I wanted a wood fuelled cooking system. The compact size is a definite advantage. I think the best way to describe it is …fun. I think I’ll leave it there and revisit it at a later date after using it more. You can view the quick video I made here.

I won’t be around for a Sunday post this weekend as I’m off on a family holiday to sunny Spain for a week. Hopefully, I’ll get my lazy, idle self away from the poolside to do some exploring and maybe even some ‘Bushcraft Espanol’! If I can, I’ll try and email a post while I’m there.

Planned posts still to come…Companion Mk2 knife review; Possible’s Pouch Revisited; A Word on Torches (flashlights); Peripheries of Bushcraft; Neck Carry; Maps and Mapping; as well as the usual posts about blundering around the woods.

Thanks for the visit.

Pablo.

Sunny intervals. Max Temp: 19°C (66°F), Min Temp: 13°C (55°F), Wind Direction: SW, Wind Speed: 10mph, Pressure: 1006mb, Humidity: 59% low, Sunrise: 04:38 BST, Sunset: 21:19 BST

Eager to get out after torrential rain prohibited an overnighter, I was up with the proverbial larks this morning. I packed up the day sack and on the spur of the moment, reached for the pocket cooker to cook breakfast on. I also took the small frying pan from the civilian trangia unit to make things easier.

The woods were very damp and the humidity seemed high as I set up the hammock to sit on. I had trouble selecting enough dry wood to start off the cooker. Little did I know this was the start of my problems. I seemingly forgot everything I’d learnt about properly preparing a fire, thinking that the pocket cooker was somehow easier to light and maintain.

I selected some bark which was still damp and tried to light some maya stick shavings with the firesteel. No luck here. After a good 5 minutes, the hungry side of my brain started to send signals to my hand telling it to reach for the Primus lighter. The bushcraft side of the brain told me to rest, think, find another solution and persevere. I shaved some finer slivers of maya stick and after a few more strikes the shavings at last caught. I gingerly fed the small flame into the burner and…it went out. I started over again, this time reorganising the wood in the burner. This time I was in business and bacon and egg was on the way.

After eagerly scoffing the breakfast, I tried to stoke the fire for a brew. I’m not completely to blame here and I felt that the burner was hard work. The trouble is that when you have something on top of the cooker, you can’t tell how well the fire’s burning or not as the case may be. Needless to say that on a couple of occasions, it petered out. To speed up the boiling process, I put the frying pan on top of the Crusader cup. Not the brightest thing to do as the bottom was covered with fire residue, which dropped into the cup. The was turning into a right royal mess up! At least I’d had my breakfast. The pocket cooker was slowly dropping down the league table of the Premiership Cooker League.

After what seemed a lifetime making breakfast, I fell back exhausted into the hammock. The damp of the woods and lack of sunlight soon made things a little chilly and I was soon seeking the more open, sunlit north side of the wood. I was soon engrossed in photographing and trying to identify some new plants emerging from the ground. I found another Bee orchid, Perforate St John’s wort, Biting stone crop, Black medick (this was a first for me), Ox-eye daisies and Self-heal. I also managed to get a shot of a Cinnabar moth.

I wandered home about 4 o’clock to a surprise Father’s Day welcome. I’d completely forgotten and the clan had gathered in my honour, complete with huge bar of chocolate, and a bottle of brandy. Best of all was the Sunday roast, which made the breakfast fiasco a distant memory.

By the way, I’ve posted a short video of the Barn owl here.

See you later.

Pablo.

We arrived at the site in Buckinghamshire in the pouring rain and it didn’t stop until 7 o’clock the next morning. There was something familiar here. Every time we arrive at these woods it’s either raining when we arrive or raining when we leave. Luckily the temperatures were reasonable at about 18 degrees C and the wind was only moderate but cold being from the north.

We helped put up the parachute and everyone settled into a rhythm of setting up, cooking and having a good chat with a few beers.

I settled for what’s become my standard setup; DD camping hammock, and 3 x 3 Tatonka tarp in an open front configuration. Despite the weather there was absolutely no ingress of rain water. I’d put my kit into the All Arm’s Bergen and there was more than enough room to spare. This bag also seemed to have an additional benefit of being even more waterproof than the Sabre when I deliberately (!) left it outside of the tarp. The contents were bone dry when I retrieved it. There was no need to carry the kit any distance, so I couldn’t test this aspect to any great effect. But as I’ve said, this Bergen is great for stuffing in kit for 3-4 days.

My colleague Paul tested out his Hexy stove by cooking a corned beef and potato vegetable stew from scratch in about 40 minutes while I struggled making a brew with my hashed up lightweight experimental stove of Trangia burner and Hexy stand! I realised that not only was the wind affecting the burn, but also the Hexy stand wasn’t low enough for the burner’s flames to be effective. Back to the drawing board! Later in the evening I saw a demo of a Bush buddy stove (photo) which was pretty impressive. This might be the solution to my lightweight stove dilemma. Certainly worth investigating.

It was a busy Saturday. A few of us went tracking in the morning while in the afternoon, Dave showed us his rabbit skinning and prep technique. It wasn’t easy to remember everything when I had a go, and I think you’d have to do it a couple of times to implant it in the ol’ grey matter. But overall, it appeared a better technique than any I’d previously seen. A couple of folk practiced their bow drill to great effect.

Later Mark showed us some spoon carving and again I picked up a couple of new techniques for carving the handle. I’ll have to describe this later when I’ve had a practice myself.

While we were away, Jason and Adam had built a pretty solid lean-to type shelter with bracken and twig thatching. The photo shows the shelter before the bedding had been laid down. The next day Jason reported that his night had been comfortable in the shelter.

The promised evening meal of rabbit stew, mash and carrots was simply outstanding. The sauce was out of this world and hopefully, I’ll be able to post up the recipe. The rest of Saturday evening was spent around the fire with the usual “show and tell” sessions of machetes, kukris and blades being brought out and compared. This picture shows a fabulous Alan Wood Damascus blade with a pretty unreal value. Also thanks to Andy who showed me his lightweight tarptent. Another impressive piece of kit.

As with any meets, all you have to do is watch and listen to those present and you can’t help learning. It was great to see some craft work (spoons, kuksas and bark containers) completed and in progress as well as looking at different sharpening techniques. At last, I know how to sharpen my crook knife!

I’d just like to say thanks to everyone at the meet for making us welcome and taking time to do the tutorials and of course, to Swyn who looks after the woods. It was a great weekend. I’ve not laughed so much in a great while and as usual, I’ve come home with ideas, learning and a sense that the UK bushcraft community is not only thriving but impressively affluent in terms of knowledge. Who needs to go on courses when there’s this amount of skill at your back door?

Pablo.

I love going to meets and I’ve been lucky to go on at least one per month since last September. It’s great to meet people and share and learn different skills, but there’s nothing like going on an excursion on your own.

I finished work early on Friday and raced home to pack the kit which had already been prepared. I managed to get everything in my 30 litre pack including the small tarp, small hammock, 1 1/2 litres of water and the bushbuddy stove nestling in the 14inch [edit: 14 cms] billy. I decided to take the bivi bag as I intended to do some badger watching. This meant I had to strap two Karrimor side-pouches to the bag. This looked a little strange but would probably work as I didn’t have far to walk. I put some food in the other pouch. The extra space meant I could take a couple of luxuries like the small Trangia kettle and small frying pan.

Exactly an hour after leaving work, I had set up in the local woods and watched as some dubious clouds spread across the sky. The forecast said there might be a shower but nothing too heavy. I had bought the bucksaw for cutting some fire wood, but I managed to find enough dry dead wood laying about which was easily broken against my knee. I intended to light the fire after the badger watch so, being hungry, I fired up the bushbuddy with some dried wood. I’m really getting the nack of keeping this stove going by continual feeding with different sizes of wood. Simmering means thicker wood, while a fierce flame requires small pieces of dry wood.

I munched my way through some pre-prepared beef curry and rice. Before I knew it, it was getting dark and time to prepare for the badger watch. When darkness falls I go through the same routine. I make sure everything’s tidy around the site so i don’t trip over anything. The head torch goes around the neck and the hammock area is readied for when I eventually turn in. I prepared the fire for when I returned. I’ll post about the badger watch itself on Wednesday.

I was cold when I returned. The wind chill factor brought the temperature right down and there was no protection in the open field. It was certainly more protected in the woods. After a couple of false starts with birch bark and fire-steel, I got the fire going and gradually fed it to a good flame. I started to thaw out helped by a nice cup of tea. It was only 9 pm but it felt like midnight.

The moon started to break through the clouds in the eastern sky, causing a silvery light to reflect off the trees. It was silent apart from the odd Rook squawk and I imagined the perpetrator being rudely disturbed as its mate huddled closer for warmth.

This is the type of solitude that you don’t get just anywhere. There are certainly more remote places or wilder places in the world, but there is a different and pleasing sense of solitude in the British woodland at night. I enjoy being alone but I was reminded that I wasn’t actually alone at all as first a Tawny owl hooted and a Mutjac barked close by.

I stopped staring at the fire just long enough to collect the hip flask of brandy. As the embers dulled 2 hours later, I climbed into the hammock and fell immediately asleep.

I slept well and only woke up for the usual relief. The wood was damp and there was a layer of condensation on the inside of the tarp. It was overcast but mild. The kettle went on the bushbuddy (this time in meths mode) followed by bacon, tomatos and an egg which had survived the journey by being cracked into a small glass herb jar.

My morning task was to trim and prune an area for use in the summer. My usual area does get a bit damp and I don’t really like to use the same spot too much. The new spot is on dryer ground but needed a little work to clear a small area. Unfortunately the bucksaw wasn’t up to the task of cutting through a low, straggly branch and I realised there was definately a design fault here. My next task then was to seek out some suitable wood to make another. I wouldn’t make it today. Perhaps next week.

After another cup of tea waiting for the inside of the tarp to dry, it was time to pack up and go. I entered the house exactly 24 hours after I left it. A great 24 hours of solitude.
Pablo.

At the weekend, Mark was good enough to host a meet at his wonderful woods just outside Reading.

Friday saw me battling with the afternoon M25 traffic to get to the “Tribe” meet in East Sussex. It was worth the long wait at the QE2 bridge as the Surrey hills opened up in front of me and shortly after, the smell of the Sussex woods started to permeate the interior of the Land Rover Discovery.

A couple of us met up at the local pub and shared a beer and a ham sandwich. The chill out had well and truly commenced.

I was quite pleased with how light I’d managed to get the pack on this occasion. I still took the Sabre 75 but it was only just three quarters full. It was only the 2 litres of water, probaby more than that amount in beer and a bottle of brandy that weighed me down. Even so it was a pleasant walk in.

I pitched up with one side to the rhodedendrons and as the forecast looked good I opened up the front of the tarp to the elements.

It wasn’t too long before more people had arrived and the social got underway. The great thing about these meets is that you can share ideas and experiences. Unfortunately, by the morning, helped by the fog of ’shrafting juice you’ve forgotten most of what you talked about!

After breakfast I decided to take myself off and do some tracking. I ended up at the pond and watched the dragonflies. Broad bodied chasers were about, and 2 smaller damselflies. The weather was so pleasant, I just laid back and enjoyed the sun feeling just a bit guilty that I should be doing something with a more craft aspect to it.

I eventually got my idle self up and followed a thin trail through the thick rhodedendrons. On the damp trail I noticed the usual muntjac and fallow tracks, but I also saw a single fox track. I stood out like a sore thumb and could only have been pretty recent. I followed the winding trail trying not to make too much noise when I caught sight of a white tail tip which disappered around a bend. I tried to speed up and on the next straight I saw a fox (a vixen I think) sauntering along the trail.

The soft ground gave me the advantage of getting closer without alerting her. When she stopped, so did I. Once she turned around but I had pre-empted this and turned side on (well, almost) to try and disguise my shape. This worked but unfortunately her next steps were at a trot and she drew away from me.

She halted again. Do I stop as well or take this opportunity to catch up? I carried on at a slow stalk prepared to stop if she turned again. I had to take a picture. I’d forgotten to do this. She had started to trot on again as I took the picture. She was gaining on me. Time for drastic measures. The old sucking on the back of the hand trick. Well that was the theory. In practice it alerted a grey squirrel who started up a furious chattering. The fox looked around caught me in mid stride and promptly disappeared to the right into the thick rhoddy’s. End of tracking session.

When I returned to the camp, there was more activity going on. Log splitting followed by the starting of a kuksa and other woodcraft work. Evening meal preparations were also in progress where a leg of lamb was slowly being roasted on a spit over the fire. You might notice from the pics the way the spit is resting on the three supports. This technique is well worth remembering if you’re going to do this yourself. The lamb had to be turned every few seconds for 3 hours. A strangely relaxing chore when I took my turn.

The day finished with more ’shrafting juice, great conversation, a splendid warming fire and … more ’shrafting juice. I was amazed at the craftsmanship of the knives, carving and leatherwork on show. Quite oustanding and inspirational. On the next meet someone’s going to set up a primitive forge. Something that I’m particularly looking forward to.

I have to recommend Nige’s website. We talked at length about wildlife and tracking and this site shows his dedication to wildlife in his back garden. Great stuff.

After a great night’s sleep (and luckily with few effects from the night before) and a bit of breakfast I slowly packed up and bade farewell to those still left. Another great weekend meeting of like-minded and very skilled people.

Pablo.