A few years back I found myself dragged off on a quick break down to Argyll with family and friends, rather reluctantly it must be said as I was working away at that time so time at home was a precious resource not to be squandered lightly.
Our hostess is an old pal of mine from my climbing days, she's was also a pal of my girlfriends, independent of me and so it was great to catch up with her and the part of her gang I hadn't met and that thawed my initial reluctance.
Anyway, on the schedule was swimming in the local loch a spot of fire building cooking. My old pal mentioned to me quietly as we made our way slowly up the single track; "the boys are into Bushcraft!".
My pal's boys and my now assimilated assorted posse of daughter and friends eyed me suspiciously as they got in about getting a fire going, "we're doing bushcraft dad". Of course I had the rod with me and had already asked locally regarding a cast so I set about seeing if I could turn up a fish and left them to it. Old guys/dad seemingly had little to offer the aspirant bushcrafter gang.
Mean while the kids, under the watchful eye of the other adults, were happily cooking up a few bushcraft sausages with marshmallow chasers and nipping off for a swim.
My bushcraft cred was taking a turn for the better when I reappeared with a brace of particularly lovely, dark red flesh
that said lime stone lochs through and through, brownies 30mins or so later, that got more than a little attention as apparently the loch had spurned all previous bushcraft-gang attempts.
So cred now established it was a short leap of faith for the kids to trust the bread twists I was knocking up for them over the fire, butter and strawberry jam helped wonderfully in that regard, as did the bushcraft "twist hotdogs", an improvised delicacy made possible by finding a stick the rough diameter of the beef bangers we'd with us, all served with lashings of bushcraft tomato ketchup.
We had a great time, I caught enough fish for all the adults to enjoy a delicacy, that I regard as the pinnacle of the wild food stuffs (and you can't buy these in the shops if you want one; one has to catch ones own), the following evening and the kids learned a few more cooking tricks. Actually on the last day the kids had an unsupervised cook off in the back garden and produced lunch for the adults, without burning themselves or the county.
That was the first time I'd ever heard the word "bushcraft" used outside the context of a TV show. At some point my daughter asked me, as the boys wanted to know, where I learned to get good at bushcraft; "Why, in the bush of course".
I have to say; I really enjoyed myself, as did we all...... Sometimes things we take for granted and perhaps regard as a little passe can be reanimated by stuff like this. As a boy my granny's boyfriend, uncle Jim, would often take my brother and I off on a ramble through the wilds of lanarkshire when the granny took us down to his for a few days, we always ended up sitting round a fire and sausages always produced from Jim's seemingly bottomless pockets. It felt good to be able to reciprocate.
Our hostess is an old pal of mine from my climbing days, she's was also a pal of my girlfriends, independent of me and so it was great to catch up with her and the part of her gang I hadn't met and that thawed my initial reluctance.
Anyway, on the schedule was swimming in the local loch a spot of fire building cooking. My old pal mentioned to me quietly as we made our way slowly up the single track; "the boys are into Bushcraft!".
My pal's boys and my now assimilated assorted posse of daughter and friends eyed me suspiciously as they got in about getting a fire going, "we're doing bushcraft dad". Of course I had the rod with me and had already asked locally regarding a cast so I set about seeing if I could turn up a fish and left them to it. Old guys/dad seemingly had little to offer the aspirant bushcrafter gang.
Mean while the kids, under the watchful eye of the other adults, were happily cooking up a few bushcraft sausages with marshmallow chasers and nipping off for a swim.
My bushcraft cred was taking a turn for the better when I reappeared with a brace of particularly lovely, dark red flesh
that said lime stone lochs through and through, brownies 30mins or so later, that got more than a little attention as apparently the loch had spurned all previous bushcraft-gang attempts.So cred now established it was a short leap of faith for the kids to trust the bread twists I was knocking up for them over the fire, butter and strawberry jam helped wonderfully in that regard, as did the bushcraft "twist hotdogs", an improvised delicacy made possible by finding a stick the rough diameter of the beef bangers we'd with us, all served with lashings of bushcraft tomato ketchup.
We had a great time, I caught enough fish for all the adults to enjoy a delicacy, that I regard as the pinnacle of the wild food stuffs (and you can't buy these in the shops
if you want one; one has to catch ones own), the following evening and the kids learned a few more cooking tricks. Actually on the last day the kids had an unsupervised cook off in the back garden and produced lunch for the adults, without burning themselves or the county.That was the first time I'd ever heard the word "bushcraft" used outside the context of a TV show. At some point my daughter asked me, as the boys wanted to know, where I learned to get good at bushcraft; "Why, in the bush of course".
I have to say; I really enjoyed myself, as did we all...... Sometimes things we take for granted and perhaps regard as a little passe can be reanimated by stuff like this. As a boy my granny's boyfriend, uncle Jim, would often take my brother and I off on a ramble through the wilds of lanarkshire when the granny took us down to his for a few days, we always ended up sitting round a fire and sausages always produced from Jim's seemingly bottomless pockets. It felt good to be able to reciprocate.
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