So with this being my first day off in forever, i figured today was the day i wake the little un up early and we have our very first trip out to get started with some practice. I have another thread in the "kit chatter" section with a little about myself and where i've started from. Suffice to say, we were not very prepared and really bleary eyed heh. With this being our first trip out, we were'nt sure what to expect. I guess we just went with open minds and to see how the day played out. We got out of the door and it started chucking it down, so not a good start 
There's some woodland not very far from the house, with what i thought would be some secluded spots away from prying eyes but when we got where we were going, there was evidence of previous visits. Whether from others interested in the craft or not, the state of the area left a lot to be desired. After a little clean up operation, filling a few carrier bags with crap, we chose our spot with 2 reasonably close tree's with forks we could jam our ridge pole into, as we had next to no cordage.
We built a little fire pit, so as to lessen the risk of it spreading. We tried for around 30 mins to create a fire but failed pretty miserably. I even cheated and brought a little cotton wool along, just in case we couldnt get the tinder lit due to the damp. I think damp is a pretty conservative description of anything we could find, so after the cotton wool dieing out and quite a bit of smoke, we gave up. On the plus side, i'd say i had a lot of practice trying to land sparks where i want them from my fire steel.
After giving up on the fire i managed to persuade the little un to drag a shed load of longer poles to our spot, Starting with the ridge pole, which had a large curve at one end. That suited our space quite well actually as it wedged in pretty strongly on the left hand side tree, due to a fork and small branch in close proximity to each other. After putting the ridge pole in and starting to lay on some of our longer poles we came up with this.
I wasnt happy at all with it and took all the poles off the back and started again, as it looked terrible. It actually held together quite well but i wasn't planning ahead at all and thought we might have some issues getting enough of a layer on because of the curves. I tore it down and we did about 15 trips to gather enough to where i was reasonably happy with the base layer.
After getting the base layer up, we started weaving a load of smaller sticks in and found a bed of what i can only describe as something similar to cat tails. We took some of those and wove them in as well. Now the rain started coming down pretty heavy at this point and without a fire, we were cold, hungry and pretty miserable. I dont think it came out too bad for our first ever try and because it's so close to home. We're hopefully gunna finish it off over the course of this week, take some pictures and then bring it all back down and send it back to nature. Here's the end of todays work. We did start to gather some leaves but the rain scared us off. Can't wait to get back out there.
Any criticism, advice or suggestions are welcomed. We're totally new to this and don't want to get it any bad habits that we have to change later. Hopefully you enjoyed my little review and i havn't made any horrible mistakes.
Fergs
There's some woodland not very far from the house, with what i thought would be some secluded spots away from prying eyes but when we got where we were going, there was evidence of previous visits. Whether from others interested in the craft or not, the state of the area left a lot to be desired. After a little clean up operation, filling a few carrier bags with crap, we chose our spot with 2 reasonably close tree's with forks we could jam our ridge pole into, as we had next to no cordage.
We built a little fire pit, so as to lessen the risk of it spreading. We tried for around 30 mins to create a fire but failed pretty miserably. I even cheated and brought a little cotton wool along, just in case we couldnt get the tinder lit due to the damp. I think damp is a pretty conservative description of anything we could find, so after the cotton wool dieing out and quite a bit of smoke, we gave up. On the plus side, i'd say i had a lot of practice trying to land sparks where i want them from my fire steel.
After giving up on the fire i managed to persuade the little un to drag a shed load of longer poles to our spot, Starting with the ridge pole, which had a large curve at one end. That suited our space quite well actually as it wedged in pretty strongly on the left hand side tree, due to a fork and small branch in close proximity to each other. After putting the ridge pole in and starting to lay on some of our longer poles we came up with this.
I wasnt happy at all with it and took all the poles off the back and started again, as it looked terrible. It actually held together quite well but i wasn't planning ahead at all and thought we might have some issues getting enough of a layer on because of the curves. I tore it down and we did about 15 trips to gather enough to where i was reasonably happy with the base layer.
After getting the base layer up, we started weaving a load of smaller sticks in and found a bed of what i can only describe as something similar to cat tails. We took some of those and wove them in as well. Now the rain started coming down pretty heavy at this point and without a fire, we were cold, hungry and pretty miserable. I dont think it came out too bad for our first ever try and because it's so close to home. We're hopefully gunna finish it off over the course of this week, take some pictures and then bring it all back down and send it back to nature. Here's the end of todays work. We did start to gather some leaves but the rain scared us off. Can't wait to get back out there.
Any criticism, advice or suggestions are welcomed. We're totally new to this and don't want to get it any bad habits that we have to change later. Hopefully you enjoyed my little review and i havn't made any horrible mistakes.
Fergs
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