Some good pictures there, unfortunately I ended up with a load of blurred pics, why I'm not sure
The weather was threatening to turn to pig poo a couple of times and indeed, was quite wet at times in the afternoon, but the trusty old canopy did the trick. I'd forgotten how good parachutes are for group shelter/classroom use.
Could do with a new one, as this one was retired from service in about 1986 and has seen some heavy use since then, as a shelter/bouncy blanket/dust cover/sleeping bag and pillow, among other things!
The day was deliberately planned to be informal, with no set route to follow as such, just a general direction and just see what we could find.
Neil Taylor, the F.C. ranger was amazing, he has a degree in biology among other things and really knows his onions! He's a very quiet character but also hilarious at times. He knocked up some amazing nettle based soup,along with a few other odds and ends including bramble shoot's and Rose Bay willow herb shoots just steamed in a billy for 5 mins.
Neil talked about how things might have been 8 or 9 thousand years ago, with just the odd small group of folk wandering through area's like ours, hunting and gathering as they went.
Eric, as always, a mine of information, explained all sorts of details relating to clothing, foot wear, tools, food etc.etc.
We spent some time down by the river, talking about how it might have looked and what would have been available compared to today; red deer, wolf, bear, beaver etc.
I talked about cordage, improvised containers, cooking fires, the price of fish and my new canoe
We also harvested a Wych Elm pole for making cordage later on, as well as a few hazel staffs for blackberrying in the autumn, the tops of which were used to hang the billies over the fire.
The group went digging for pignuts,next to the base camp area, managing to gather a slack hand full and have a look at our resident alpaca's ( as Eric is prone to say: "lovely pelts on those!" or, in my case: "there's blxxdy good eating on of those"
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Ken did a quick fire lighting lesson for those who had not been on our previous course days, while the rest of us concentrated on getting a brew going.
Then it was a demonstration on making an ask bark container, sewn with spruce root. This fitted in very nicely, as of course when foraging, you need something to put your harvest in. 8 or 9 thousand years ago, it would be bark or animal skin, so as we had no skins available.......
The question was asked by one of our students: "Oh, are we going to make one of those today then?" to which of course I had to reply, that in order to do that, we would have had to spend a couple of hours gathering the required materials beforehand and this was why our third event on June 08th, was a full day of learning to make the containers, including gathering the materials!
Anyway, I was buxxered by the end of the day, as was the rest of the team but thoroughly enjoyed it, with no moans or whinges from our students
Thanks as always to Eric, Ken and Neil for their support and commitment and get booked up for our Bark container workshop-June 08th.
Cheers
R.B.
(message to self: must stop eating lard bars and crisps!
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