Recent content by Toddy

I know I keep hammering on about it, but in a glass bottle it's lethal. I gave a bottle to a neighbour with the clear instruction that it was lively and to mind and release the gas. He drank half and put the bottle away in the cupboard. His wife was ironing just in front of that cupboard when...

I would have said that Buck knives are brittle, not the Helle ones. The Buck ones really keep a sharp edge, but, well, it can come at a cost. I use a Helle all the time. A little Helle Polar. It's my second one, the first one delaminated on an overgrown tree tie. Helle replaced it very...

It is if you make it up to that recipe, but if you make barley water and add lemon, then it's a lovely drink and it doesn't need all that sugar. This is an original Victorian (probably earlier, but by Victorian times oranges were fairly common, not just for the wealthy) recipe for Lemon or...

In many areas, yes. In Perthshire, which is hotching with second homes....look at Fortingal...there are more names on the cenotaph than there are children in the school, but every house is owned, and mostly empty in Winter.....it has become holiday home central; indeed the crannog centre...

It can make a lovely lemonade, but it's very good if you add some ginger to it too :D A lovely Summer drink.....just don't seal the bottles if you have any thoughts that there's still any fermentation at all.

If it hasn't rotted, it'll be sound enough to twist up and not shatter into crumbs. Thing is though, mostly we use nettle straight from the stem and the peel is still on it...that gives us a false impression of the staple length of nettle fibres. Flax and hemp will give easily eighteen inches...

Rotted not retted :sigh: If the nettle stands dry, then it flakes off it's outer peel and the fibrous stuff clings to the stems. Hemp does the same. Flax, if it stands and doesn't fall, does too, but it goes grey not so white, and not so good for spinners.

They wash and are resuable if they're made of the fabric.....I did say that the 'good' ones can just be burnt. I just use the filter that sits inside my mug....it's a very fine metal mesh.

I find this calm watery area fascinating somehow. It is so far removed from where I live, worked and played that it seems almost an alien world. It's beautiful though, and so rich in life. The older videos, the how things were done, are just the perfect way to chill out.

JustKampers will usually do a van as a 'camper under conversion' though, and that drops the rates without the large expense of a camper van. Living history does not pay well usually, and the work is very seasonal.

It was more an illustration of something affordable that could be 'small' enough that it wasn't really any different to driving a car. On site there are facitilies, there's a lot of space, etc., it's just somewhere, as you say, like a small tent. I do agree, and indeed I did say, that I think...

It doesn't need to be a big van, it's just your safe comfortable place to sleep, to store 'stuff', to get you from A to B and back home again reliably. This one's 1.6m long in the cargo area and 1.2 wide....that's enough to build up a sleeping platform...use storage boxes and build on...

@Longstrider I read your post and thought, "Oh, practical. A good thing ".....and I thought to buy to put into my husband's kit for when he's off solo hillwalking (he's 81) as a just in case, as something to give peace of mind. It never occurred to me that they might in any way be a fire...

I confess I have very little success glueing goretex. In the factory they use heat on the tape, etc., to do so. What has worked is a) figuring out why it failed b) being practical instead of wanting perfect renewal c) sewing and then glueing, or using an iron very carefully to seal the...

Son2 is going glamping with a family friend next week. He'll need his sleeping bag. I'll ask him to burrow out the mat and take a photo while he's up the loft. I quite like the look of the modern eggbox like ones. The old one is much flatter.