Most of us consider that a billy is essential for cooking in the outdoors. The billy of choice is invariably a Zebra billy of some description, although I prefer the Tracpac billy.

Over the last year, I’ve also used a frying pan as I do like my bacon, eggs and beans in the morning. A frying pan is nearly as versatile as a billy. Although of course you can’t hang it over a fire, it’s great for heating up preprepared food and when shallow cooking. A shallow pan tends to heat up food quicker and you can even boil up water at a push. Of course for frying with a little oil it’s unbeatable.

I’ve been using the small frying pan out of a Trangia cookset. It helps to have a non-stick version; in fact I’d say it’s essential. The only disadvantage is that the Trangia version is a little small even for one person.

I’ve seen a few people using a frying pan with a folding handle and after a few enquiries discovered that it’s called a Primus Litech Frying Pan. After parting with £15 to Blacktoe (cheapest online by an average of £4-5 in UK and an excellent service) I received it the other day and took it out on a day’s excursion last weekend.

The first thing that impressed me was the weight. It weighs just 268 grms. The non-stick seems robust enough and I’ve heard that it doesn’t wear off even after heavy use over a number of years. The size is 165mm (base) x 220mm (top) which is certainly a little more generous than the Trangia frying pan. It takes up little room in the rucksack if you pack it vertically at the back of the pack. The depth is 50mm. Perhaps this is a little overkill and half that depth would have done me to be honest, but I can guess it would be a bonus for the more liquid based meals. But at least I can get my beans in there without them spilling over the pan.

The best design feature is the fact that the handle folds under the base of the frying pan as opposed to over the top. This allows you to pack items in the dead space of the frying pan before packing it away in the rucksack. I’ve put a small bag containing spoon, alcohol gel, pepper, olive oil, sauce and a pot gripper in this dead space. The provided netting bag, which could double as a foraging bag, will keep everything together.

To deploy the handle, you unfold it, squeeze it together and fix it into the locating holes. For additional safety, you can lock the handle in position – another nice feature.

Of course, this is a bit of a luxury item if you use it in conjunction with other cooking kit; but it is good addition in my opinion. If you’re still in doubt, think of this – if you’re using a crusader cup for boiling up water, you might not even need to take your billy with you. This might save a bit of weight and will certainly save some space.

Pablo.

The weekend’s weather couldn’t have been more perfect. I arrived at about 1.30pm at Mark’s wood in Reading. The mile walk in was really pleasant and I stopped off to admire the still lake, which was on the way. I was pleased to reach the cool of the woods after a sweaty hike across the field leading from the lake.

As promised, some moving pictures from the weekend’s meet at Mark’s wood.

On Friday I once again met up with Scrivy and old mate JP as we offered to help out Les and Brett from Wildcrafts run a course for some youngsters in the depths of an Essex wood.

It wasn’t too long before the fire was going, the hammocks were rigged (a nice open configuration to take into account the good weather) and we had opened a bottle of beer for a pre-course social.

The next day Les and JP showed the youngsters how to handle and sharpen knives and make some shelters.

It always amazes me the amount of effort and energy it takes to build a natural shelter. This must obviously be taken into account when you’re in a survival situation. When all is said and done, there may be alternative ways to build a shelter. Perhaps making a lean-to with a fire in the open front may be more cost effective in terms of energy. Personally, I’ll stick to a tarp.

Talking of energy, Scrivy kindly made me this brilliant flint axe. What a fantastic job and it will take pride of place in my study. Thanks mate.

The shelter building and fire making soon gave way to water filtering and food prep. Les has certainly got things right in terms of teaching the basic skills in order of priority. The youngsters’ rabbit prep was helped a long by the provision of a muntjac cooked “spit-roast” style on our side of the camp and provided the full complement of about 20 people with enough meat to go round with some to spare.

That evening I did a small talk and an exercise on night vision and light discipline in camp. It’s amazing how many people insist on wearing the head torch complete with bright white light on their heads instead of around their necks, thereby shining it into peoples’ eyes and obliterating any night vision they might have had.

I concentrated on using other senses in the woods not only at night but for use during the day as well. Instead of a picture of that, I’ll show you a huge Dryad’s Saddle fungus JP found and identified. The fungus is edible and the coin is a 2p piece (about 1 inch diameter.)

The next day the group was split into two groups. While Les took one half on a wild plant walk, I ran a man hunt scenario with a bit of tracking involved which seemed to go down well. Despite the dry ground and lack of substantial clues, both teams found the escaped prisoner before the helicopter came to airlift him away. Well, I like to pretend if no-one else does!

All in all it was a great weekend as usual. It was great to see the youngsters enjoying themselves in an open but controlled environment. I think there might have been a couple of adult converts as well.

Thanks for the visit.

Pablo.

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.

On Saturday I went into Poor Park woods. I was specifically looking for early signs of spring (ever hopeful.)

I’ve seen snowdrops on the roadside verges but very little else. There’s no birch trees in these woods so I couldn’t test for rising sap. In fact, all in all, I was a little disappointed.

I did notice some Dog’s mercury coming through the woods floor…

… and some early growth on this as yet unidentified vine-type plant.

Looking back at this time last year, there was certainly a lot more going on. It’s not really surprising as only a couple of weeks ago we had a load of snow. Nevertheless, the last few days have been beautiful and sunny, but still with cold nights of –2C and lower.

There was a lot of sign of mammal activity, particularly badger, who seemed to congregate in this one spot. I couldn’t figure out why apart from possibly a territorial scent area that I couldn’t detect.

As last week, I settled down to some scrambled egg for lunch. Even I can do this pretty well. If you crack a few eggs into a Pour and Store bag, add some thinly sliced ham, cheese and onions, take along your favourite frying pan and stove and you’ll have a nice light lunch in no time.

By mid afternoon I’d drawn a blank in finding signs of life in these woods. Despite the bright and sunny day, there was quite a strong, cold, easterly wind.

I sat down to finish off the last of the coffee and noticed a red shape trotting along the main track. He was inquisitive enough to observe me at a distance, and I managed to squeak him in a little closer but he didn’t fall for it entirely and eventually he decided to cut and run.

Mid-week I’ll talk about a great day on the coast today looking for fossils.

This weekend saw me helping out Wildcrafts School in Essex. Apart from introducing new people to the world of Bushcraft, it seemed as though Bush Tucker was high on the agenda for the weekend.

A few nice crayfish came up from the lake and these were dispatched and cooked up with some garlic.

This was closely followed by sweet potatoes cooked up by Scrivy with maple syrup, rum and a couple more ingredients I’ve forgotten (but I’ll edit the post once I know).

We had a go at tapping birch again and the tree generously gave up some refreshing liquid. We also tapped Hornbeam which is a first for me. The sap came out just as fast but I noticed it wasn’t quite as sweet as birch sap but just as refreshing.

We learnt our lesson from last time and didn’t spit roast the Roe deer (brought along by Adam from the National Trust). Instead, Scrivy butchered the carcass and placed it on a green stick framework for a green-stick BBQ. The result was a wonderfully tender venison that was cooked in a third of the time.

Still on the subject of cooking, we tested out three very different types of stove. Firstly, Andy’s bushcooker with a stainless meths burner. This is a very similar set up to my bushbuddy and trangia burner set up. The bushcooker looks equally efficient as the bushbuddy (and cheaper) but on this occasion we were testing it out in meths mode. 1/2 litre of water took 17 minutes to boil.

Next came Simon’s excellent MSR multi-fuel Simmer lite. This took just 4 mins for the water to reach a rolling boil. I’m quite impressed by these multi fuel cookers and have never really considered them before. I think they deserve a closer look.

Finally, I tried out my Crusader cooker with hexy blocks. The water took 13 minutes to boil.

I think this confirms what we all knew already, and at the end of the day the water boiled! But the choice of stove very much depends on what you are going to cook up and where.

Back to the bushcraft course and the lads on the course were doing extremely well with fire lighting and food prep. The squirrel got a mixed reaction. But as Les pointed out, the squirrel taste will vary depending on it’s diet and autumn may be a better time to eat them.

Les led the way around the wood pointing out edible food pushing their way through the woodland floor and more pertinently, what wasn’t edible. The leaves and petals of this Primrose are edible.

The tracking session went very well as we picked up a couple of fresh Fallow tracks right from the start and followed them for a 100 yards or so. We also found good evidence of feeding signs.

A break though moment came when, still following the Fallow trail, we were ageing a series of Fallow deer scat. As we walked through the woods the scat got more recent until at best guess we decided the still sticky and shiny Fallow scat was about 10 – 15 minutes old. Low and behold, we saw the shapes of some deer through the thick brambles. Unfortunately, they didn’t hang around.

A study of one narrow trail revealed a multitude of mammal movement including Fallow, Muntjac, and Badger.

A lot of time is spend on shelter building as the subject is so important, and quite rightly, the lads were proud of their efforts. Here’s the pics as promised.

Thanks to everyone for a great weekend.

I hate travelling during a Bank Holiday. You tend to spend more time in traffic queues than you do at your destination, so we tend to stay local.

On Friday, we visited Cambridge where the parking fee was more expensive than the mini-trangia I picked up in a sale. More about the trangia later.

On Saturday I went into Poor Park woods and, apart from a squirrel feasting on some bird seed somebody had left, I saw very little in the way of mammals.

I did notice that on the woodland floor, more plants were pushing their way through. Sweet violets and even some Ground ivy was coming through. Dog’s mercury was now about 7 inches high. Despite the promise of Spring, the weekend was cold with outbursts of rain.

When I got home I had a surprise waiting for me. A parcel containing the ATN Night Storm night vision monocular had been delivered. I’ll do a separate post on this later.

Sunday – I took advantage of the low morning tide at Walton-On-The-Naze and went fossil hunting again. This time I took Mrs P who thought the Tower might need propping up to save it falling into the sea. This time I did find a shark’s tooth and another piece of flint. On this occasion the flint is a flake and doesn’t look like an actual tool. We picked up more fossilised wood with the intention of showing it in our own Eocene display in the lounge.

Today, I wandered into Outfield wood. Again, it was very quiet. I tried out the mini trangia which really is an excellent bit of kit. I’m using meths cookers more this year simply because my local camping shop has closed down and it’s harder to get gas canisters. I must admit, I don’t mind meths stoves at all, particularly if they’re of this quality.

I was worried that Pablo’s Big Breakfast wouldn’t fit in the mini-frying pan. Of course it’s not as versatile as the Primus version but it could still do what was required, albeit in stages. Best of all the size is perfect for ultra-light and compact camping.

As I sat on the fallen log, I happened to look down to see a badger print. I deduced the badger had wandered over to scratch at the log to try and loosen some bugs and beetles for his own dinner.

It certainly wasn’t an action packed weekend, more of an idle one. Nevertheless it was a good break. I hope yours was as good.

Thanks for the visit.