So what about we buy some woodland as a syndicate in a reasonably central or reasonably accessible (to us) location?
As I can't afford to buy a house and don't want to pretend that I can do it by becoming slave to one work location while I paid off a huge, multi-decade mortgage, I'd been thinking about simply buying some woodland instead!
And hey, if I needed a permanent place to live, I could build a leaf shelter on it! ;-)
So I'd already looked around
http://www.woodlands.co.uk/north.htm and noted Red Gap Wood and Long Wold Wood. I'd prefer more acreage and more water access for the money but since when could a bushcrafter have everything laid out on a plate?
OK, supposing we just play with the idea.... let's just consider some questions....
How much money would members have to stump up?
Could some members pay a small fee to use such a site in order to pay off bigger contributions made by other members?
Could some members shovel up some money for some of it and a syndicate take out a mortgage on the remaining? (is this something the Ecology Building Society would look at?)
Or better yet, how about assessing how much member cash is available, and how much extra could be borrowed from relatives and the loans paid back to relatives with a better-than-bank-but-much-less-than-mortgage-lender interest rate? (I don't need to borrow money from my folks but I wish I did because I could pay them a better rate on their savings than they get at the bank and still pay less interest than I would have to pay a bank or building society)
Or making it available to woodcraft schools for a fee (again to help pay back any loan required to cover a differential between what we could raise and what we would have to pay)
What rules would a syndicate site need?
One I would propose is that no animals be taken using commercially made means (in order to protect the wildlife and the interests of other members)
I think many other rules could be summed up in the basic principles of bushcraft: no litter! (duh), no forest fires (duh), no ghetto-blasters (duh), no wild parties (well, maybe wild parties but not religious worship stuff).
I inclined to say that membership rights and access should be equal among all who put up cash over a certain amount (say, [pounds]1,000), regardless of how much they put up individually. If I put up [pounds]6,000 and found a bunch of other bushcrafters were always there more than I am then I don't care - they can teach me what they learned! They pay a [pounds]10 fee or a [pounds]20 annual membership fee for the right to go there whenever they want. Don't worry about the numbers - I'm merely chucking them out there to get a perspective into play.
Also, just to get a base level number for a contribution out there, I could put 4,000 into this idea and possibly a couple of thousand more. How much more would depend on when, how things are going with work, etc.
Maybe this idea should be given a thread. Maybe there already is one for this idea - I haven't checked yet!
)
