Took a day off today. The weather was so good. It was too good to miss a day out in the woods. Friday 13th? Pah! No worries. I prefer going to Broaks Wood during the week as there are fewer people and dog walkers. I don’t mind dog walkers, in fact when my black Labrador, Ben, was alive, we used to go there often. But dogs do disturb the wildlife. These thoughts came apparent as I had a break in the small valley.

After about 10 minutes sitting in the sun, I spotted a mutjac deer about 20 yards a way. I scrambled for the camera but hit the wrong settings. A wasted opportunity but at least I was able to see it wander off casually down the valley and up the other side of the hill. A couple of seconds later, I heard barking, which I assume was the deer I’d seen.

I’d always wondered why the wood was called Broaks Wood (Brock is an old English names for Badger, but it might not be this) I had never previously seen any signs of Badgers in the woods. This changed as I climbed to the highest point of the wood. I spotted a track mark pointing to a dip in the wood. After guessing where the owner would go, I came across a huge sett with a number of entrances, scratching posts and latrines. It must have been extremely old judging by the scratch marks that had healed in the wood.

I continued up to the highest point of the wood and had lunch. I had dispensed with the trangia today and had just brought sandwiches. I knew I was going to do a bit of walking and wanted to travel light. In fact I only had my sit mat with me. The axe was swapped out for the walking stick, the trangia for ham and cheese sarnies. The view from the top of the wood was wonderful. Looking east, it appeared the epitome of the English countryside with undulating hills, farmland and wood.

On the way back via a different route I discovered a Hornets nest. Not so much discovered as someone had put up a sign, warning of the impending ‘danger’. I spent a while filming the nest actually getting quite close. They appeared not to be too bothered by my presence. I did start to worry as suddenly quite a few came out from the nest at once. I think if you panic in these situations, it just makes things worse and even insects smell your fear, so I got up slowly and walked away.

My last encounter was with fallow deer on top of a hill. Again, I only just managed to catch the deer on film before they ran over the top of the hill. They must have seen me approaching as at that time I wasn’t walking particularly quietly. Most of the trip I had been. I have learned a technique of walking in the woods so as not to spook wildlife. You basically walk toe to heel instead of t’other way round, keeping the feet pointing forward and s l o w l y does it. I also roll my feet out to in. This is quite hard work and can’t be done for long periods, especially if you’re not wearing the right footwear. I tried to follow the deer but they had a greater head start. There were so many tracks in the mud, I didn’t know which ones to follow.

I finished the trip at one of the small ponds, where I spotted a few more dragonfly. You all must be getting fed up with these dragonfly pictures, but I do find them fascinating. Actually, I made an identification error with the previously shown ‘red-dragonflies’. They were in fact Common Darters (but still red in colour). The variation of the Common Darter colour is this brown colour and probably means it’s a female.

Okay. Now here’s something I want to try out. By pressing the wrong button on my camera, I activated video mode which I very rarely use in the woods. I got home and mucked about a bit (a lot actually) and came up with a video of the excursion. I know my technique needs a bit of work and the image isn’t as clear as I thought it would be, but see what you think. It’s about 3 1/2 minutes long and there’s no audio. I might do something on a more bushcraft type subject at a later date.

Inspired my Mungo’s post on the same subject, I knew there was a bow saw out there and even better, a collapsible one at that. My search ended at Bearclaw. This was cheap, collapsible and had three blades. It duly arrived in its own nylon bag. I stashed it in the same Sabre bag pocket as the axe and headed for the woods.

At first it was a bit of a mission finding out how to set it up. I was a bit dubious that the whole strain of the blade was held on a small pin in the handle. The saw didn’t look as though it was mass produced. My fears were realised as the blade jumped off the pin when I took up the strain by pushing down on the handle. No harm done, but I was very aware that when I set it up next time the hole in the blade was seated firmly on the pin, and I also kept my eyes well away when I took up the strain on the blade. I’m not too sure how this small pin and its seating would stand up to constant pressure of taking up this strain and general use.

Cunningly concealed in the main strut of the saw is a further two blades. These are help in place by a simple screw which pushes the blades into the side of the main strut. One is a hacksaw blade and the other appears to be a normal small toothed blade. The wood blade is the one I would probably use more.

Once the saw has been seated correctly on the pin, the strain is taken up by pushing the plastic handle down to make the whole thing triangular shaped. This triangle shape might be a little restrictive on larger sawing projects but this is the price of portability. The plastic handle was surprisingly well positioned to use the saw, although I’m not sure if I would say that if I had bigger mitts. The whole thing is very light weight, made from aluminium and plastic (apart from the blades). I tested the saw on a piece of fallen log.

The saw rattled a bit (due to the other blades) but after tightening the screw it wasn’t too bad. I’m not a woodworker by any means, but I was pleasantly surprised at the speed the saw went through this hard wood. It doesn’t have the weight that I think most people would like for a bow saw, but again, that’s the price you pay for portability. For larger cutting projects and to complement the axe, I think this is a winner and for £15-95 you can’t go far wrong. The test will be longer term use on a couple of winter projects I have in mind.

On another subject and following the post about pot hangers, I’ve been asked by Sam from Woodland in Poland to put up a video about how to make one, so here it is. I don’t think that any of the books show you how to do this properly because of the difficulty in showing all the angles involved to do it successfully, so I’m pleased to contribute. (I shy away from calling it a tutorial as I don’t think I’m skilled enough to call myself a bushcraft tutor). Even now it looks a little awkward, but this is probably more due to the fact I was trying not to block the camera view with elbows and arms. I had the video camera jammed between two branches and the weather looked ominously wet. Excuses over. Here we go…

More next time.