Stone me! I'm not doing that again in a hurry! Just brought back 3 stones (42 lbs or 20-ish kg!) of wood on the pack frame so that I can take some wood to the Moot. Add my brew kit, axe, saw blade poncho and ventile smock on top and I tipped the scales at 13 stone when I weighed myself when I got in. I weigh just a shade over 9 stone! Walked from The Ratbags' and my new secret area in Hugset Woods back to Silkstone with this on my back, along the Wagon Way. Probably only a kilometre or so, but it felt like extremely hard work! I still don't think I have enough though, so I may go back for another pack load at some stage. I'll take The Ratbag next time though!
It wasn't all doom and gloom though. No pictures as I wasn't gonna cart my camera as well, but I took Rachel with me. The Monkey is 5 and not all too well at the moment but she wanted to come along. I ensured she was wrapped up and had plenty of warm gear and fluids, packed some cold sausage butties and a chocolate bar, a brew kit and mugs and off we went. It took a bit to find the place that I visited with The Ratbag last time, but it was off the path and in a nice setting with plenty of dead standing wood in the surrounding thirty or forty yard area. It is stands of once coppiced hazel and sycamore.
So, we set about getting a fire going and got a brew on, gathering wood later saw the billy getting upset onto the fire!
Fortunately, the billy didn't put the fire out and with some quick action the flames were soon back up and a fresh billy on the go. I continued to cut wood for the pack frame whilst I allowed Rachel to tend the fire. All she did was watch it and tell me if the flames were dying, but she felt like she was doing something important and she was.
It was her first lesson in wilderness fire today, so after showing her how to gather some tinder such as birch bark and red pine needles, we got some small twigs and set the fire place. Once the flames were licking through, we placed on larger fuel and then main fuel to get a good bed of embers. Whilst doing other things after our snap of sausage sarnies and black tea, the fire burnt down to fine ash and small pieces of charcoal. At the end of the visit, we packed up and then dowsed the fire, scattered the cold embers and hid the fire pit by covering with moss and leaf litter from the forest floor. Nobody would know we had been there if it wasn't for one thing.
Getting abit fed up with crouching on the deck with my bad knees, I decided to make a bench! This I will need to get pictures up of. It is a bit rudimentary, the seat needs to be replaced with a wider branch as the one I have used, although I have chopped it down to a flatter surface, is still like sitting on the side of a broom handle and isn't too comfy. It is braced so it shouldn't fall over and it has a back rest too. All made form dead standing hazel, no idea how long it will last. Hopefully, on the next trip I can finish it off properly and have a deent sit spot for the future visits. I can't wait to show The Ratbag the new furniture!
