Choose your own adventure..

[mountainm]

You wake up in a wood in the middle of nowhere. There are no discernable footpaths and you can hear no traffic noise. The ground is wet after what seems to be a weeks worth of rain and the drizzle is constant. The snowdrops are peeping out the ground and the sky is overcast. The sun is hidden behind dull grey clouds.

You are wearing a stout pair of walking boots with a thick pair of hiking socks, a pair jeans with a leather belt, a cotton white T-shirt under a cheap long sleeve top with a fleece zipped into a gortex raincoat. On your head you have a baseball cap. You are cold and starting to get wet.

A quick search of your pockets reveals a kit kat, a wallet (containing 2 credit cards, one £5 note, 3 pound coins and a fifty pence piece) A set of house keys and a car key.

On your wrist you have a watch. It has stopped, but it still works - it's kinetic and needs a good shake to get it going again.

You have a pair of glasses tucked into your chest pocket.

Their is a small 30l rucksack at your feet inside is 0.5 litres of water in a 1l sigg bottle, a can of coke and some ham sandwiches wrapped in foil.

The terrain is boggy in places, the trees are mostly birch with the odd ash, oak and occasional holly.

What now?

 

[Ivan Owen]

Serious answer: have a quick chuckle.

 

[MSkiba]

Start walking, you have enough supply's to walk for a day. Find water. You have a raincoat so no problem walking in the rain. Once you get to a water source, re-asses your options.

 

[mountainm]

Serious answer: have a quick chuckle.

You giggle inanely to yourself, a crow caws off in the distance in response, your jeans are getting soaked through and the cold is beginning to bite.

 

[v-ness]

I'd probably sit down and eat the sandwiches while wondering how on earth I managed to get there and not remember

Ness

 

[mountainm]

Start walking, you have enough supply's to walk for a day. Find water. You have a raincoat so no problem walking in the rain. Once you get to a water source, re-asses your options.

http://news.discovery.com/human/walking-circles.html

 

[MSkiba]

Yeah people walk in circles, bushcrafters dont I would still walk to find a water source and to scout the area. If I dont find anything (or walk in a circle), I would set up a shelter and a fire.

I would try and guess the time, taking worst case scenario that I woke up at 11am, and set my watch. If I dont find anything by 3pm I would start digging in for the night.

 

[Tank]

What! you mean i am not carrying my survival tin that i have been carrying for past ten year! now that bad luck and bad timing.

 

[mountainm]

How are you going to light the fire?

 

[Shewie]

I'd probably be pretty worried that I'd woken up in a wood, but then I'd be happy that I'd managed to pack a day sack and grab a goretex coat before the little green men took me away.

I'd climb to the highest piece of ground or tree and look for signs of a village or town, work out the direction I need to travel and set off.

 

[BOD]

Foil, Car key battery. birch bark, tinder, twigs etc???

 

[Bushwhacker]

How do you know what time it is if the watch has stopped?

 

[locum76]

Have a nice snack, walk down hill until I found a co-op, buy some sausage rolls then get the bus home before the bairn needs her bath.

 

[Laurentius]

Well as the countryman said to the lost tourist "If I were you I wouldn't have started out from there in the first place"

I might be thinking "Now where did I put that altoids tin" but whatever, I see that making fire with the spectacles is out, no sun. Watch is not much good for direction if it is the wrong time and there is no sun, but if you could estimate north you could set it right roughly, and in any event it would still be good for timing how long you had been walking so give an estimate of distance.

I would put the glasses on and start walking right away unless it were getting dark. Walk downhill if there is a downhill, and listen for running water. (yes I know it's raining and that makes it difficult) Walking is the best way to keep warm, and you have food enough.

Now the question has to be, how did I get there in the first place? in the boot of someone's car, or did I stumble, knock myself out and lose my memory.

In any woods in the UK if you can maintain something like a straight line you will come out the other end eventually and then be able to better assess where you are or might be. I'm quite used to walking around in woodland without any particularly fine sense of where I am, and I always find my way out again, else I wouldn't be here would I?

The probability is if I have a car key, I drove to somewhere nearby and it's just a matter of finding out where, there is probably a track leading to the woods, or there will be some sign of human presence when you get out, fences, farmland, stone walls, farmhouse in the distance etc.

Of course if I were Bear Grylls, I'd be climbing trees and skinning squirrels with my bare teeth (what for I don't know)

 

[sasquatch]

Wait till it's dark and find the nearest light pollution.

 

[MartiniDave]

I'd ask myself "What would Bear do?", then I'd do the exact opposite and come out in one peice!

 

[Home Guard]

As said before, climb the nearest large tree or hill to reccy for any man made features.
If nothing within suitable distance to walk before nightfall is seen, use the keys to strike against a flint for fire. Try and create a primitive shelter. Once I have created the shelter I would drink the water in the container and then use the raincoat laid out to collect rainwater. Before nightfall I could set primitive snares etc using my boot laces. Flint could be improvised as tools. After a few of settling down and forageing, generally enjoying the experience of being "missing", I would stroll about every couple of days untill I find signs of civilisation.

Or I could just easily retrack myself?

Shouldnt be long before civilisation is found, I would probably be somewhere in the U.K. I dont know any other country where long distance sleep walkers pack there own sandwiches.

 

[Laurentius]

Or I could just easily retrack myself?

Now why didn't I think of that? Maybe the bump on the head that made me forget why I was there in the first place

I remember in my youth losing a pair of Spectacles in the local woods. I went home to borrow a pair of my dads which were roughly the same prescription, and followed my own tracks in the woods till I found them. It wasn't difficult as I'd left quite a trail of broken broken twigs and branches blundering my way out of the woods without my specs.

 

[Home Guard]

Wrap the foil around a credit card as a signal mirror?

Before I shake the watch, take note of what time it stopped for future references.

Being spring, I would start to tap some sap from the birch trees using the keys to drill into it and the other credit card folded up to make it run into an improvised container.

We've all heard the myths of using a coke can and a chocolate bar to light a fire. Could work using that method and the glasses as a lense, but not in this climate.

Once water is found, I could sterilise it on the fire in the metal sigg bottle.

Just a few thoughts.

 

[MSkiba]

How are you going to light the fire?

Bootlace to make bow drill.

UNTILL i found a good way to calibrate my watch, I would assume I woke up at the same time I do every day, due to my internal body clock. A guestimate is better than nothing.