Best laid plans of mice and men .......

[Goatboy]

Bummed out for you Bod but as you've accepted what's happened I'm sure you'll embrace what you do get to do. And in some ways it's even more realistic as if we were forced to survive in an EOTWAWKI situation then what are the chances that you wouldn't be injured or at least not have been in training and in peak condition before hand? I always try to look on things like this as a learning curve; and although unfairly steep sometimes I find I appreciate it all the more because of it. I know you and I have had our share of do-do piled upon us but I think that we're both happier and maybe better people because of it? I'm certainly happier with myself mentally and feel my skills have been honed because of obstacles placed in my way.
I think you'll still have a great time and the course organisers sound sterling folk who'll teach you a lot, both skills wise and attitudes to problems to be overcome. Any story of survival I've read the folks who've gone through it have found their best tool has been their mind and the attitude that controls it.
Hope we get a chance to meet up whilst you're up here, would be good to get around a campfire and talk. Always say that some of the best conversations have been had with woodsmoke my eyes. Sorry I can't get your boat up for you, can't drive and my car's declared SORN at the moment anyway.
Looking forward to some cracking reports of how it all goes.
ATB,
GB.

 

[GGTBod]

Hit the nail on the head Colin, just gotta push on deal with the issues and make the most of it, I had a good nights sleep and now i am just looking forward to a great time out and about, actually highly unburdened mind and body since i accepted the kayak is not coming along it's weight off my mind and my body in a literal sense, thanks for the encouragement everyone it is appreciated.

Very excited now, looking forward to joining Patrick and crew again and meeting new folk and more than anything learning new skills to enhance my outdoor life, one day i will have the skills to the point where i just don't bother coming back to my hamster cage in the city but that is not this trip.

Well signing off now i gotta finish getting ready, see you all on the flip side

 

[Clouston98]

That's a shame mate- but good on you for not giving up! I'm sure you'll still have a good time!

 

[GGTBod]

Just got back yesterday, my detachment from the technological lifestyle has left me feeling very adverse to getting consumed by it again so my report will be brief due to me not feeling very literary.

All plans went out of the window and the adventure was off the cuff and all the better for it, please excuse my literary bluntness this is the most i have written online since coming home, i overshot my train stop much to the comedy of the train staff, met with the Backwoods school staff and had a truly brilliant educational experience and made friends, a boat and paddle, a stoneage oven, a stone age smoker, fishing hooks and cordage, fishing nets and the needles and gauges to construct them, venison jerky, collected shellfish and caught crabs and ate them all, fed the local midges profusely no matter what i put on my body until i managed to get some Smidge, after the course I found my body rejects Quavers as a food stuff and prefers to projectile vomit them rather than digest them, roamed Arrochar and slept on Loch Long, then Lomond, visited one of Rob Roys cave, saved a vegan couple from nutritional deficiency and freezing to death at nights, met literally thousands of people from all over the world on the West Highland Way, rejoined the backwoods survival School the weekend after as a helper with a new class and taught a brand new bushcrafter to make a bow drill set and more importantly make it work which enabled him to light fire for his group to get fire once in their A frame shelter, learnt to carve with an axe and made 2 spoons, advanced my wortcunning, came 'home' reluctantly to the city where i am already feeling the cabin fever and claustrofobia kicking in, currently planning fleeing this concrete jungle to the lake district as soon as my map set arrives

Photo's, sadly my phone broke halfway through my trip and would not turn on at all so i have no photo's after leaving Lomond last thursday

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6zpzwqb12aqteas/AACBKen_60VWt7ooOYV2dqQ7a

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/6at802y2vcawkn5/AADSrO3KYxok6nlp272f7OyOa

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rslwpytkltkwnec/AAD6X9OFm15vTC69KDVL6Gota

 

[cranmere]

Sympathy. It's all very well a shrink telling you to accept it but it isn't that easy. I have rapidly progressing osteo-arthritis due to hypermobility and it's immensely frustrating to see others walking off into the wilderness and not being able to follow them.

 

[Toddy]

As Précis go, that's pretty good

Sounds like a cracking good course, jaunt around, and follow up effort too

It always takes time to get used to the concrete jungle again after you've been away; I'm incredibly glad that I have woodland at the end of the garden

Thank you for the write up and the photos

atb,
Toddy

 

[GGTBod]

Thanks Cranmere and Toddy i am determined not to be stopped by my medical problems, i'd rather die on a mountainside than in this flat, currently I'm feeling this huge drive to sell all my stuff that won't fit in my bergen, give up my flat and hit the road, hope it calms down soon, either that or increases to the point where it no longer seems like a plan driven by temporary insanity brought on by living in a box after living in the world

 

[Toddy]

I have rheumatoid arthritis; there are days when the stairs could be Everest for the sheer scale of climbing up them
Then again, I have many, many days, weeks and months when I happily potter around the gardens and the wood and burn next to the house; get absolutely manky, and it's amazing how soul deep happy I can feel just sitting outside making stuff

I reckon that life's not huge things, but it's the combination of little things that somehow like synergy make it awfully much greater a whole than in bits.

On that note, I've got a pot of gypsywort to boil up for dye some sweet peas to cut for the house and more rushes to make into rope. It's a good afternoon

atb,
M

 

[cranmere]

I deal with it partly by finding things that I can do even if it's with difficulty and waving 2 fingers at it. I'm blowed if I'm going to sit around in a heap and do nothing. I can't walk easily but I can still cycle and swim, and I took up diving a couple of years ago.

 

[joejoe]

bst of luck . if thas is your pic / you look damm familiar

 

[GGTBod]

That's me in my pics and avatar, if you are Washington DC you must be familiar with my doppelganger, if it is Washinton North East England we are less than 10 mile from each other so maybe we've met, there are some shameless selfies in this link https://www.dropbox.com/sc/6at802y2vcawkn5/AADSrO3KYxok6nlp272f7OyOa check them out maybe work out where am i familiar from?

 

[GGTBod]

just realised a good chunk of my pics were not in the share folder, rectifying, feel like a caveman since coming back to the city and technology seems alien to me

 

[GGTBod]

other half of my pictures, mostly from my camping around Loch Lomond

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rslwpytkltkwnec/AAD6X9OFm15vTC69KDVL6Gota

 

[Goatboy]

Glad your back (though not at the same time, you know what I mean!) and it's a pleasure to read your notes and digest the wonderful pictures. The seafood stew looks good and the crabs look pretty scrum (even though I'm not the biggest fan of crab). Looks and sounds like you had a blast and made some good friendships. It's a word I don't really like as it's been hijacked by psycobabble folks and kaftan wearing social commentators but you seem to have been empowered by the experience, coming out of it with a glow of strength and happiness. The post expedition blues will fade, you'll always feel caged after experiencing a bedroom with such vast walls and a ceiling that goes on forever. Remember coming back from a solo trip into the desert for the first time. Felt very confined and restricted even outdoors in a town. The weather looks like it smiled on you and sorry about the midge! They were programmed to keep the worst of the tourists away, but something went wrong with the encoding! Think of them as mini leeches and how much you'd have to pay for good old fashioned bloodletting! They used to say it was good for you! You seemed to learn a heck of a lot of skills on the course, I'm impressed. And the work shown in the pictures is of a darn good standard, boat, creel, nets all look brilliant and seemed to have fed both belly and mind.
Good to hear from you and we'll meet up for a brew next time,
GB.

 

[GGTBod]

Bang on there Colin, when i passed through Glasgow on my way back to Blantyre it was deafening and manic, not enjoying the walls and ceiling one bit now i'm home, even the floor is pissing me off, stuck my mat and bag down last night as a simulator and woke up a couple of hours later like i'd been steamrollered flat and in agony. My lake District map pack should arrive tomorrow so at least then i can bury my head in there whilst i finish a spoon i carved with an axe before heading out again, talk about feeling the call of the wild, it is like it has been screaming at me my whole life and i just started to listen and now it's all i can hear

 

[Dreadhead]

cracking pictures! glad to see you managed to enjoy your trip, and didn't let your ailments get you down. The canoe project looks braw, and loving the fish trap

 

[GGTBod]

Lots of hard work making the canoe between 2 of us but was very rewarding, soon i will be starting a boat build project in my living room, same principle of a ribbed skeletal structure but i am going to use wood panels instead of a skin

Me and my myyy basha paddling on the ole Loch Fyne doobie doo

 

[boatman]

Try this for an almost instant kayak.
http://www.shelter-systems.com/kayak.html

A friend and I built one just using hazel, willow and string for the hull skeleton as a reconstruction of a possible skin boat the remains of which were found in a grave near Dalgety in Fife.

 

[boatman]

The completed craft with our coracle

 

[GGTBod]

I like it, consuming the linked info now