Just a quick post to open the revamped site (complete with new title). I’ve gone over to beta blogger. Quite a few good features and more flexible. There’s now post categories (on the right) and I’ve added a list of my favourite blogs.
Take a moment to look around a give me some feedback if you want.
Thanks for the visit.
No pictures today?
No, there’s no pictures today and I’ll tell you why. Predicting a flurry of spring activity, on Sunday I took the hammock and camera specifically to film the exploding progress of spring. I started by tracking down the tapping of a woodpecker. Realising that the tapping was coming from inside of a tree, I settled down and waited anxiously for the incumbent to appear. A blink of an eye and a flash of red, black and white and the Greater-spotted woodpecker flew out of the hole and up to the tree line only disappear across the fields never to return that afternoon.
Undaunted, I visited the marshy area of East wood and crept up on a Moorhen and a pair of Mallards enjoying the warm rays of the sun streaming through the trees. Up went the camera, off swam the Moorhen and away flew the Mallards. I was beginning to think that this was not my day. This was confirmed when a Green Woodpecker refused to pose, and even the usually patient pheasant squawked noisily away with a loud flapping of wings that warned every other living creature in the vicinity of my presence.
Cursing the bird life, I decided set up the DD Hammock and followed the example set by the insect life. I spread myself out and warmed myself in the sun.
I like the postman
I bumped into the Postman today. “Ah, Pablo”, he said. “I’ve got a parcel for you. I think it contains your new Hammock, a Nanok Endurance -10 sleeping bag, some Maya sticks and a box of heat gel.” “Excellent,” says I. He was absolutely right. I wonder how he knew.
Sleeping bags and women’s logic
I spent a while playing with the new sleeping bag in the house last night. It wasn’t until I had nearly exhausted myself trying to neatly fold the bag back into the stuff sack when Mrs Pablo, who was sitting on the stairs grinning, said, “What’s the bag you’re trying to get it into called?” “A stuff sack,” I replied. [Pause] I looked at her for a few seconds, and then resumed my flurry of activity, this time literally stuffing the bag into the stuff sack. The bag, being expelled of air as I stuffed it in, easily went into the sack. Women’s logic, eh?
Spring clean
I’ve given the site a bit of a spring clean. There’s a new link to my videos on the right, which includes one I made on Sunday about setting up a DD hammock. I’ve put in a Kit Pics area, which I hope to update regularly with err…pics of kit
24 hour excursion
The sunny, warm, spring weather continues across the UK. With night temperatures expected to rise over the weekend, I’m off to the woods on Friday for a 24 hour excursion. If the straps for the new hammock don’t arrive, I’ll probably just use a bivvi bag and the new Nanok for a bit of ground dwelling. See you after the weekend for a report on how it went.
See you soon, Pablo.
Welcome to the new domain. Volume 2 of Pablo’s Woodlife begins!
I’ll try to bring some of the archive posts from Blogger over to this site, but at the moment I’m having a few problems. Edit: completed successfully Tuesday 12th Feb
Feel free to look around. I’ve added a few extra pages which I hope to populate with more interesting material in the future. In the meantime, there are a few photos to view. If you have any comments about the site, or you find something doesn’t work, I’d appreciate it if you would give me a comment.
Thanks for the visit. The adventure continues!
Pablo.
Meet Lewis Oliver… with old Grandpa Pablo.
At two days old, Lewis is probably the world’s youngest bushcrafter…
You can probably see the Swiss Army Knife he’s clutching. It’s the Escort SAK.
He said he’ll do a review when he’s a bit older.
We knew it was on the way… but even so – it was sheer delight on looking out the window and seeing SNOW!!
Like kids we leapt up and ran out to play in the snow.
Across the fields it looked almost like a white out.
Mrs Pablo came too. She likes snow.
So did Bill. We’re looking after him for a while.
He had great fun, but we nearly lost him.
I saw no other tracks except Bill’s. The snow came too late in the morning for any serious tracking. You can see how Bill kicks out his left rear leg when running full pelt. It’s the third track in each series. Even when not tracking, I’m tracking.
Bill wonders why Grandpa is still outside while he’s inside.
The snow was gone 4 hours later. I suppose that’s it for the year. Sorry if you’re from Canada and America. You must be sick of the stuff.
Tomorrow’s going to be fine and sunny. I’m going to the woods for the day. Hopefully there will be something good to write about. See you on Wednesday.
Pablo.
Have a look at this picture. What do you see?
Shall I tell you what I see? Silence. Peace. Tranquility.
It’s been quite a busy week culminating in a birthday party for my wife last night. We were invaded by people. It was a good party but… well, you know what I mean. Too many people for me and far too loud. I’m getting old.
Today, I escaped. It was bliss even with a chilly easterly wind blowing through the wood. I set up the hammock, cooked up some beans and watched the squirrels leaping around the trees. After a few hours, I was completely chilled out.
On the way back I noticed these plants in the hedgerow.
Thanks for the visit.
You may have noticed a new tab at the top of the page. This leads you to a new forum page. I created this especially for the Reading/Bucks bushcraft group so they can arrange and discuss their meets in private, but I’ve also created a general discussion board for anyone.
The intention is not to outdo the excellent forums already out there, but to create a friendly online environnment so that everyone can have a discussion or chat or ask advice about anything to do with the outdoors. Hopefully we can share knowledge and ideas. Think of it as a virtual campfire. If you want to join in please follow the instructions on the page to register.
You may also have noticed that I’ve moved from blogger to wordpress. There are a number of advantages, particularly if you have your own domain like this one.
One advantage is that you can create extra pages so you can put up other stuff up on the site either for others or for yourself.
I’d like to expand the site to offer something more. I’ll do this slowly but surely, as and when I have the time. Any ideas would be good.
I’ve asked for feedback on the readability of the posts. A couple of people said it was too dark but most have no problems. Thanks if you commented. I have brightened up the fonts slightly. If it’s too bright it tends to blur the text.
I was lucky enough not to lose any posts when converting to Wordpress. Since then I’ve been a little concerned despite the ability to back up posts electronically that one day I would lose 4 years worth of journal entries. This post is number 200 by the way.
I’ve recently found an excellent little tool that converts the Wordpress blog to pdf format. Although it’s still in a beta version, I found that it formats the posts reasonably well putting the oldest posts first. Hence you have an archive of posts including all the pictures and potentially a hardcopy book.
Here’s an unedited extract from 2006 (2MB). Included free are all the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
Any publishers out there? 
No, I didn’t think so.
Thanks for your continued visits to this site.
Pablo.
This is why I love the British woodland in spring.
You probably don’t know how much this photo means to me. Ok so it’s dark and blurry but it’s my first photo of one of my local Badgers.
After many hours trying to even see one of them I managed to actually get a photo at last.
There are a number of problems with the local sett. Firstly, I don’t get up there too often although it’s not too far away. The second problem is that the sett is on a long, low rise with many sett entrances. Most of these are on top of the rise so if they do come out, you only tend to see a fleeting glimpse of a silhouette as you’re generally at the base of that rise. Grass growth makes it almost impossible to see anything in the late spring and summer. The final problems is that the area is in the middle of a field. The prevailing wind is not conducive to where the best lay up position is.
On this ocassion, I said sod convention and went on top of the rise and laid up about 10 yards away from the most recently dug hole. As the sun went down out came this chap. He immediately ran to a hole even further away before I could even point the camera. When he came out of that hole, I managed to get a couple of shots off. Only one was good enough to put up.
I’ve heard reports that there are cubs about but I didn’t see any here. In fact, this was the only animal I saw. Perhaps I was too close and he got a scent of me. There was no movement for the next hour (in the area I was watching anyway) and so I called it a night.
Nevertheless, a nice result for me and I went home grinning all the way.
Pablo.
Weatherwise, it’s been a fantastic week. This weekend was the same and next week looks good as well. The temperature has been in the mid 20’s centigrade with bright sunshine.
I’ve had a great week going out most evenings and, of course over the weekend. I had a little more success with the badgers, filming 2 adults and two cubs.
I also spotted this little lapwing chick well camouflaged in amongst the ruts left by four-wheel drive vehicles.
I had a wander around some new woods. I’ll talk about these woods in more detail later. I was content on this ocassion to meander along the pathways and explore the new areas. On my travels I spotted fallow deer, a pair of munjac and a lone fox cub. I found myself a nice sit spot and had a brunch of bacon, egg and beans.
The woods are vibrant with new growth. Bugle and ground ivy covers the woodland floor but there’s also scarlet pimpernel, early-purple orchids and doves-foot cranesbill.
This year I’m not just trying to identify wildflowers, but trying more to understand their medicinal and edible properties. I plucked some leaves of this garlic mustard to complement a salad. It tastes like garlic too but it doesn’t have the long lingering after taste of normal garlic.
Of course, the ever present nettles are pretty versatile as well, particularly the young leaves.
Thanks for the visit.
Pablo.
