My life hasn't always been this idyllic, but what it has given me is a good perspective on when it's going well.
As some of you may know, I am an ecological consultant living in East Yorkshire and currently it is my busy time. What you may not know is that I am still recovering from a broken leg (tibial plateau fracture) that happened whilst on exercise with the Army Reserve. As I run my own business I was pretty convinced that I was going to be out of business this year and would likely lose my clients for at least a year if not more. Financially I would be okay and would be looked after by the Army Reserve but I didn't really want to have to rebuild an already relatively new company from scratch again.
So what was the plan? I decided that I was going to work anyway but use my own Reservists to do the work for me. Although most of the work I do requires a licence from the Statutory Nature Conservation Organisation (Natural England, Scottish Natural Heritage etc.) I can accredit others to work on my behalf under my own licence so long as they have had the appropriate training. Most of my soldiers are either in temporary employment or are unemployed outside of the Army Reserve. This is usually a choice they make so that they can take advantage of all the training opportunities, and previously operational tours, that are on offer. For example, last training year my guys have been to Kenya and Cyprus as well as some interesting exchange visits to the USA and Canada.
So with a selection of willing volunteers I started training them to survey for great crested newts (GCN) and bats; the staple of my consultancy work. Armed with bottle traps and canes, instead of the usual firepower we carry, they learnt quickly and have become more than proficient in surveying for their chosen quarry. What I hadn't quite realised is how good they would actually prove to be; good at map reading, used to working late into the night with good levels of concentration, robust enough to work their way through brush and hedgerows, these guys seemed made for the job.
So why am I posting in the Out and About section; and why the title? Well, not every site we work on allows us to wild camp (with permission, of course) but we have had the luck to work on a couple of shooting estates and once they realised we weren't idiots likely to burn the place down, they both allowed us to camp out and hang up our hammocks with impunity.
Last week I took charge of a new L200 after my last one broke yet again (can't be doing with a broken vehicle when I'm this busy) and we set out to a site in Staffordshire. The site involved 14 ponds that required survey and would take up most of the day, that night and most of the next morning to complete and to save time we decided to pitch camp early. We pitched in a mature deciduous oak/ash wood and then set off to set out traps.
A bottle trap is simply a 2ltr drinks bottle with the top cut off and inverted into the body to form the trap. These are held in place using canes as shown below:
Once in place (in this case over 400) we retired back to camp for dinner and waited until it got dark enough to search for the newts by torchlight. Being tight Yorkshiremen we decided on using our reserves of buckshee rations and sat around to the musings of old soldiers desperate not to lose their warrior spirit, romanticising about previous operations and friends lost in both battle or from the usual peacetime dangers that now frequent our more pedestrian lives.
Once satiated and it was dark enough we set off armed with either Clulite Clubman CB2 (1 million candle power torches) or my new LED Lenser M17R (quickly becoming a favourite). We use the torches to count the number of newts in the pond and it still amazes me now how my soldiers become fixated with the wildlife you can see in a pond at night.
Once all 14 ponds were surveyed by torch we retired to bed around 0015hrs. My particular abode was one UK Hammocks Woodsman X DL bought off this very forum accompanied with a Snugpak underquilt and Softie 3 sleeping bag. I'm still getting used to hanging but these recent trips have given me plenty of time to perfect my hang (which it still isn't) but all three items are first rate. Prior to 2013 I had always spent my time on the ground, and depending on the site and how much time we have, will revert back there. But I am quickly becoming a card-holding "Hammocker" just for sheer comfort if not anything else.
Up at 0530hrs I jumped into the huge boot of the L200 and started a brew going with my Alpkit Brewkit then on with the rounds of waking the chaps up. Another great thing with soldiers is they get up straight away; none of the nonsense of having to go back out to rouse them again. Suitably refreshed we got back on with collecting in the bottle traps and counting the numbers of newts we'd managed to capture.
Why count newts then? Well, like most wildlife in this country that has specific protection it is either because their numbers are falling or they are persecuted by man. In the case of newts it is because on a European level their numbers are getting smaller. By providing a population estimate this can inform the amount of mitigation that is required as part of the development to limit the impact on the species in question. In this case the area proposed for development would need to be trapped out using drift fences and pitfall trapping for a specified number of days which relates directly to the number of newts found.
Our working day usually finishes around 0900hrs and is followed by a long drive back to East Yorkshire where I have to clean the traps ready for their next deployment to avoid cross contamination and the spread of disease. It's a hard job but a highly rewarding one which can often feel not much like work at all.
This post it not about trying to make people jealous or envious of my job but simply to share that sometimes, some days, you get a win.
As some of you may know, I am an ecological consultant living in East Yorkshire and currently it is my busy time. What you may not know is that I am still recovering from a broken leg (tibial plateau fracture) that happened whilst on exercise with the Army Reserve. As I run my own business I was pretty convinced that I was going to be out of business this year and would likely lose my clients for at least a year if not more. Financially I would be okay and would be looked after by the Army Reserve but I didn't really want to have to rebuild an already relatively new company from scratch again.
So what was the plan? I decided that I was going to work anyway but use my own Reservists to do the work for me. Although most of the work I do requires a licence from the Statutory Nature Conservation Organisation (Natural England, Scottish Natural Heritage etc.) I can accredit others to work on my behalf under my own licence so long as they have had the appropriate training. Most of my soldiers are either in temporary employment or are unemployed outside of the Army Reserve. This is usually a choice they make so that they can take advantage of all the training opportunities, and previously operational tours, that are on offer. For example, last training year my guys have been to Kenya and Cyprus as well as some interesting exchange visits to the USA and Canada.
So with a selection of willing volunteers I started training them to survey for great crested newts (GCN) and bats; the staple of my consultancy work. Armed with bottle traps and canes, instead of the usual firepower we carry, they learnt quickly and have become more than proficient in surveying for their chosen quarry. What I hadn't quite realised is how good they would actually prove to be; good at map reading, used to working late into the night with good levels of concentration, robust enough to work their way through brush and hedgerows, these guys seemed made for the job.
So why am I posting in the Out and About section; and why the title? Well, not every site we work on allows us to wild camp (with permission, of course) but we have had the luck to work on a couple of shooting estates and once they realised we weren't idiots likely to burn the place down, they both allowed us to camp out and hang up our hammocks with impunity.
Last week I took charge of a new L200 after my last one broke yet again (can't be doing with a broken vehicle when I'm this busy) and we set out to a site in Staffordshire. The site involved 14 ponds that required survey and would take up most of the day, that night and most of the next morning to complete and to save time we decided to pitch camp early. We pitched in a mature deciduous oak/ash wood and then set off to set out traps.
A bottle trap is simply a 2ltr drinks bottle with the top cut off and inverted into the body to form the trap. These are held in place using canes as shown below:
Once in place (in this case over 400) we retired back to camp for dinner and waited until it got dark enough to search for the newts by torchlight. Being tight Yorkshiremen we decided on using our reserves of buckshee rations and sat around to the musings of old soldiers desperate not to lose their warrior spirit, romanticising about previous operations and friends lost in both battle or from the usual peacetime dangers that now frequent our more pedestrian lives.
Once satiated and it was dark enough we set off armed with either Clulite Clubman CB2 (1 million candle power torches) or my new LED Lenser M17R (quickly becoming a favourite). We use the torches to count the number of newts in the pond and it still amazes me now how my soldiers become fixated with the wildlife you can see in a pond at night.
Once all 14 ponds were surveyed by torch we retired to bed around 0015hrs. My particular abode was one UK Hammocks Woodsman X DL bought off this very forum accompanied with a Snugpak underquilt and Softie 3 sleeping bag. I'm still getting used to hanging but these recent trips have given me plenty of time to perfect my hang (which it still isn't) but all three items are first rate. Prior to 2013 I had always spent my time on the ground, and depending on the site and how much time we have, will revert back there. But I am quickly becoming a card-holding "Hammocker" just for sheer comfort if not anything else.
Up at 0530hrs I jumped into the huge boot of the L200 and started a brew going with my Alpkit Brewkit then on with the rounds of waking the chaps up. Another great thing with soldiers is they get up straight away; none of the nonsense of having to go back out to rouse them again. Suitably refreshed we got back on with collecting in the bottle traps and counting the numbers of newts we'd managed to capture.
Why count newts then? Well, like most wildlife in this country that has specific protection it is either because their numbers are falling or they are persecuted by man. In the case of newts it is because on a European level their numbers are getting smaller. By providing a population estimate this can inform the amount of mitigation that is required as part of the development to limit the impact on the species in question. In this case the area proposed for development would need to be trapped out using drift fences and pitfall trapping for a specified number of days which relates directly to the number of newts found.
Our working day usually finishes around 0900hrs and is followed by a long drive back to East Yorkshire where I have to clean the traps ready for their next deployment to avoid cross contamination and the spread of disease. It's a hard job but a highly rewarding one which can often feel not much like work at all.
This post it not about trying to make people jealous or envious of my job but simply to share that sometimes, some days, you get a win.
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Thank you for that 
