Bushcraft clangers - the great frozen fudge faux pas...

[John Fenna]

a recent yomp through a coastal woodland saw me leaving the safe haven of the tree line to a hop, skip and jump down the normally soft-underfoot chalk and lime cliff down to the beach. Having walked this same path countless times, i thought i was sure of the conditions underfoot...indeed my dogs sprinted ahead and bounded down leaving no footprints whatsoever in the chalk/lime rock.

As i stepped from a rocky outcrop onto the softer ground i literally sank up to my thighs! The dogs seeing me at their eye level started jumping around and getting excited, thinking i was mucking around. The bottom of my pack literally bottom'd out on what would have been the ground. Being up to my thighs in thick, claggy chalk i was literally held fast. I left my pack on thinking it would somehow spread my weight as it had already bottom'd out onto the ground. I had to grab hold of gorse/bracken and anything else i could get my hands on to prize myself out of the mud. It literally took me almost 10 mins to claw my way out of trouble, and at the end of i was totally exhausted! And i keep myself very fit and healthy. Funny now i can look back on it...but I must admit panick did start to creep in.

Lesson learned....you can never be 100% sure of the conditions underfoot, even if you travel that path often. Oh, and dont rely on your dogs to run ahead and give you an indication of how bad it is. Lesson learned!!

You aint the only one!
I sank up to my groin on the Pennine way (Featherbed Moss - by Kinder way...well named). I had to get my rucksack off, lie on it to free my legs, stand up to get the rucksack out of the slime, put it behind me, sit on it to free my legs again and repeat the manouver twice before I got onto "firm" ground. All on my tod (in the midle of a Lands End to Johno'Groats attempt(failed) at the time) thick scary mist (Iwas only 20 and a bit green) wild open moors and a long way to civilisation (Watford) or my planned campsite (wild - natch).
My trousers - MOD lightweights - never recovered and had a darker hue from the fly down for the rest of their useful life. It was a goodthing I was young and fit or I might have given up then ( that happened at Durham - after dislocating my knee near Earby) and been a whimp all my life

I have other excuses for being a whimp!