Pablo’s Woodlife

I’ve been meaning to check out some new local woods for a while now, but only got the opportunity when some neighbours mentioned that they knew the landowner. They would ask them on my behalf if I could use the woods.

The woods are surrounded by fields, but it doesn’t take long to walk along the edges and access the wood. The first thing I noticed was the similarity to my normal woods. No woodland management, a whole load of fallen branches, and little undergrowth because of the dense tree canopy. There is some evidence of coppicing, but only on the outsides of the wood.

Having a quick look around, I noticed plenty of deer tracks (probably Roe deer) and fox. I also discovered that someone had built a watch ladder. I guessed that no-one had used it for a good 5 years judging by the growth around it and the general state of the structure. The rope had decayed, so I quickly set to work making it safe by renewing the rope. It wasn’t long before I was sitting at the top with a great view of what appeared to be a crossing of 4 animal trails. Someone knew their stuff when they built this.

I had lunch near the edge of the wood. It was a fine day, and I made use of a couple of fallen trees as rests. I tried out how the tarp would fit around the area and slung my hammock. Looking around, I thought this might be an ideal area to construct a semi permanent shelter. A good winter project. This was an exciting prospect. New woods, plenty of fallen wood and trees, and plenty of wildlife to track.

As my attention turned to lunch, I wandered what everyone else has in their ration bag. I take the same sort of stuff every trip (not very adventurous). I always have enough for 24 hours which includes, a tin of beans, a tin of fish, tea and sugar, packet soup, condiments (salt, pepper) packet porridge, cereal bar, nuts and raisins, home made jerky, hygiene wipes and a spoon. I normally take a piece of fruit with me as well. Sometimes I add fresh meat and vegetables, but then I would take the civilian trangia to actually cook on (as opposed to just heating up the food).

For these day trips, I would probably get away with a packed lunch and a thermo flask of tea, as I’m out for only 6-8 hours, but I actually like using the trangia (or where possible an open fire – even better).

I finished the trip with what has now become standard procedure on my small excursions. I fell asleep. I woke up to see a grey squirrel sniffing amongst my belongings. It was so close I could touch it. Out of the many definitions of bushcraft, one has to be being close to nature. Well, you can’t get any closer than this. Ok, so it’s only a squirrel, but I actual felt that I was part of the wildlife in the wood, not just a visitor. Maybe this was a sign that I was welcome here.

I was lucky enough to be invited to the first Essex Group Meet weekend. We arrived on the Friday and set up in a narrow piece of woodland backing onto a water-filled old quarry. This was a great backdrop to what turned out to be an excellent weekend.

The fire wasn’t easy to start as everything was very damp. With a little persistence, we were soon cooking up an evening meal on a greenstick barbeque and, of course, a few kuksa’s full of the obligatory port went round to ward off what little chill there was. It was really pleasing to see the owner of the wood, Peter, come and join us for a while around the fire. What a breath of fresh air to see a land-owner who understands bushcraft and is willing to make their land available.

Saturday saw a leisurely start to the day with a huge communal fry-up followed by a few fire-lighting skills. The abundance of cramp-ball fungus in the area complimented the bow-drill skills on show (not mine by the way!)

We took a foraging walk through the nearby orchard and through the larger woods to the north of the site, coming across some large parasol mushrooms which were duly collected for the evening’s stew as were some sweet chestnuts. Rosehips replenished the vitamins drained out by overindulgence the night before.

Mark’s tree identification proficiency was joined later by Les’s wild foods expertise. Les was a warden for the woods and is setting up a Bushcraft school in the area called Wildcrafts.

Even though we were a little too noisy to spot wildlife, I did pick up a couple of Muntjac tracks crossing the paths that criss-crossed the wood.

The evening stew was prepared by Mark and John. Stewing steak, mushrooms, chestnuts, burdock roots, small potatoes, carrots, turnips et al went into what proved to be a delicious stew. Les provided the “bush-style” bread and a little later, John (junior’s) shoulder of lamb that had been cooking hangi-style was dug up. This turned put to be as tender as any meat I’d had. Stuart’s pigeon was next on the menu. This was the first time I’d had this meat and it certainly proved tasty enough if rather strong.

The whole meal was a prefect example of cooking from fresh in the field with additional foraged ingredients. The food was washed down by even more port passed around in a traditional drinking horn. More than a few “toasts to the woods” were made.

Mark and Les showed their talents on the guitar and others including me showed their talent-less singing accompaniment. By midnight, the hammocks were calling. The calls of the owls were drowned out by 9 snoring bushcrafters.

A gloriously fine day greeted us when we awoke. After breakfast, the sad chore of packing up came and went. The others pulled out bows and arrows, while unfortunately I had to head back. This was another great weekend where shared knowledge and skills came to the fore. As with previous group meets in other areas, it is the comradeship of people sharing a common interest around the open fire that makes gatherings like this such a special event.

Many thanks to John who organised the meet and to Peter who owns the land. Here’s to many more… AHHH!! No more toasts!!

Pablo.

7 degrees C day 1 degree C night Rain SW – NW 18 mph

The lads had left the firelighting task to me and just before sunset, I used some birch bark and the firesteel to light the fire. This wasn’t all that easy with the wind swirling around even in the relatively sheltered spot between two hillocks where we had set up. It’s always a little unnerving when you have a bit of an audience as well. Nevertheless, it took no time to catch and I was pleased I spent some extra time gathering some drier kindling.

Stewart duly skinned the rabbit and I chopped up the vegetables forraged from the garage. The shoulder of lamb was buried and the fire was built up on top of it. The stew pot was hung over the flames on the tripod hanger. Four hours later, it was all ready to go and we eagerly tucked in.

My colleague Paul tried out his new Highlander bivi tent and reported that it was really snug and worked well. My DD hammock also worked well as I thought it might. The mosquito net actually kept a lot of the draft off my body.

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

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.

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

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.

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.