The "Immac" Hide

Yuletide Get Together

Thank you so much to everyone who turned out for the Rais Yuletide get together. The rain held off, the temperature was easily bearable and the sun even made an appearance this morning (love winter camping... the low sun hits The Yardarm before 11am - perfect!).

We arrived at 10am just in time to get the fire going and the pans on for Bambi Bolognese and Roe Deer Chilli before guests started to arrive. The mulled wine flowed well, admittedly most of it into my new Rais Birch wine goblet, (beautifully turned by Jon on his lathe), and the guests flowed in and out over the course of the afternoon.

So lovely to see everyone and I'm especially grateful to those who braved the elements and stayed for a cosy night round the fire, grazing on all-sorts of Christmas leftovers and laughing until the moon rose over the clearing. Magical. 

It has to be the first time (and will probably be the last) that I have gone to Rais without my DSLR camera - choosing instead to set up the trailcam around camp and let it capture whatever it chose to. The idea being that it would not only relieve me of any self-inflicted pressure to capture the perfect shot, but give me some relaxation time, some shots with me in them for a change, and of course some night-time infra-red images from the evening too.  Obviously the shots with me in them were a ridiculously bad idea and most have already been deleted, but I love the infra-reds.

After sausage and bacon butties for the morning after the night before, the trailcam was also able to capture the gang hard at work erecting my new shed-come-hide in an almost timelapse fashion. The shed is named "The Immac Hide", in honour of its' provider - lest he ever forget the generosity of his donation and the hours of entertainment it is yet to provide. 

It has a few mods still to be made - some new roof felt and a hide-style window shutter, but I can't wait to try it out this holiday, knowing I will have a warm spot to sit in and a sturdy platform for my tripod - no more kneeling on the cold mud with cramps in my knees!

The perfect end to a perfect get together. Same time next year folks?

went to retrieve the camera today..... OMG!!!!! so excited...

Right outside "Trap number 2" - almost eleven at night at the end of September. There is a second image ten days later at about 1am - similar shot although you can see less of him/her.
Going back to bait the same spot tomorrow and reset the camera.
Whoooo hooooo - finally! So happy.
Going to need considerably more peanuts with the abundance of pheasants around right now, but if this Badger returns often, at least Trap Number 2 will provide me a comfy hide to sit in!

Stream clearance and rock-lobbing

Checked the camera trap and have finally caught the melanistic fallow deer, poised on fox ridge, in early morning. Have also decided that this is definitely the spot for another wildlife hide. So anyone with any old sheds to donate, please get in touch.

Rai by Starlight

I had a go at Starlit photography whilst sat round the fire - using a 28-70mm lens on my old Pentax, a head torch and a tripod!
- this one was taken with a 30-second exposure
It was a new moon weekend which made the stars a lot more visible, but still quite tricky - not really knowing what I was doing, but with a bit of trial and error I quite like this resultant shot of Rai. Definitely need a better torch though - very dim!

Calocera viscosa - "Yellow Stagshorn"

Leaves just starting to fall and provide a colourful carpet underfoot whilst still looking very green above. Love this harvest moon month - when everything is busy storing food away and bulking up for the winter months. Rosy cheeks and fresh misty mornings - awesome rainbows and unexpected blasts of warm sunshine.
Spotted a few fungi on my lunchtime stroll - this one I believe is Calocera viscosa - it was greasy and therefore not a true coral fungi. It is commonly known as Yellow Stagshorn, although the colour is more often pale orange. I now know that a white form also exists, but it is not a common find.

Timelapse of the dam being built...

Uploaded to You Tube!

Bank Holiday Dam Building

So the plan was to have an army of people (the usual August Bank Holiday camping crew) to spend the weekend digging out clay to form a pond and use it to build a dam to fill it... unfortunately it didn't quite turn out like that... we had the mighty Flee, our dam designer, builder and site manager extraordinaire, and his two sidekicks, Cripple and Flid. Tracey's ongoing back torment means she can't work for too long and my non-functioning arms also make me pretty near useless right now... but we decided to give it a go anyway. We started Saturday morning digging and shifting clay from the more open end of the ditch where two streams feed the ghyll and then dumping/flinging/throwing/flicking it as close as we could to where the dam was being built by Flee at the far end. We tried shovels, then spades, and finally our bare hands, and when that was eventually too painful we stopped for food and a brew. It was seriously hard work and the sun beating down on us in a stagnant clay pit was really not comfortable. But we ploughed on after lunch, fuelled by Flee's enthusiasm that we were doing a cracking job. Thankfully Ant turned up later in the afternoon to take over for a bit and we were able to rest.
Finally we reached Saturday evening; the "quarry" was immense, the darkness drew in and the "beancrap" was bubbling on the fire for dinner, but Flee had still not returned from taking Becky home - 9pm came and went and suddenly we heard the familiar donkey call from the top of the wood... followed amazingly by the call of a chicken....Mungo was with him! and the girls too - the cavalry had arrived. We pitched a tent for the girls and got them fed and in bed and settled in to hear Mungo's version of events from his recent epic journey from John O'Groats to Lands End on his Scooter in just 24 hours. Awesome feat and an awesome evening. Donations are still flowing in and if you want to know more click here and please donate to his worthy cause - the Friends of Sussex Hospices.


Sunday started once again with more digging and shovelling and a lot of clay puddling and some fantastic stonework on the outfall side of the dam. A minor hiccup around mid afternoon caused some frantic stake collecting and insertion before the dam once again looked stable and formidable (if a little tank-like with its' overflow pipe stuck out at 45 degrees into the air!). Mungo had to return home Sunday night for work Monday, but was determined the upstand would be in place and the pond filling before he left and how right he was. I was beside myself with excitement. The pipe went on at 445pm and we checked the levels every hour until the last torchlit check at 1045pm. By which time we had baked and eaten Camembert for the 3rd night running and drunk a heroic amount of red wine. Life doesn't get any better.

The weather had been so kind all weekend - and then Sunday night happened. I was woken at 5am by the creaking of the tarps above my head weighed down with gallons of water that was about to land on me in my bunk. I don't sleep in a tent at the wood, but on a wooden A-frame bed with canvas stretcher - so pretty open to the elements... only a tarp and my bivvy separated me from the torrential downpour that continued for hours through the night and did not slow until at least lunchtime. I had to get up every 20 minutes to empty the tarps and so there was no going back to sleep and also no going to check the pond, much to my annoyance. I'm not known for my patience and so by 745am I was dressed head to toe in waterproofs and dancing round my brand new and completely full pond in the rain. I came so close to getting in for a dip, but being alone in the woods I decided that might not be a sensible thing to do in case the banks were unstable and collapsed trapping my legs in the water for any length of time.
By 830am I could not wait any longer and shouted for Flee and Tracey to get up and come look - it really is a thing of beauty. It might be just a sludgy-coloured body of freezing cold water, but to me it represents a haven for all kinds of creatures that can now make Rais their home. It's perfect. Looks like it's always been there, has ledges and levels, shade and full sun, as well as plants and roots already lining the banks. Magic.
It really won't take long for the wildlife to take up residence and in fact Flee already found shrimp in the bottom before we filled it! I can't wait to see what else arrives.
Because of the heavy rain, the ponds overflow pipe was doing its' job and the water was thundering down the standpipe at a serious rate making the dam sound like a hydroelectric power station at times. Flee spotted a slightly concerning leak next to the outfall pipe which suggested the water had found a route through the sandy soil on the north bank of the dam. Not a major surprise - but a teething problem we will have to monitor over the coming weeks.  We had a big celebratory fry up for breakfast in the Yardarm as it was still raining, and managed to complete a few odd jobs that needed doing whilst keeping a close eye on the water levels every half hour. Even managed to put in some steps down to the dam making it much safer for "Cripple" and others to get down the bank and see the pond. Something was bugging Flee - he needed to satisfy himself he had done everything he could to ensure the dam was solid.... his method soon became apparent when he stripped down in the Yardarm and ran butt-naked to the pond to get in and feel for leaks! What a way to end a cracking weekend!!! Amazing job team and an amazing pond/pool/haven. I love it.

fist set of steps before and after!!!!!!!!

One year one... this is what happens if you don't use steps every week in the summer!!!!

Kitchen Storage - Before and After

The Long-Awaited Naming

The front of the kitchen at Rais faces south-west, meaning that at this time of year the sun hits the decking at about 5pm - typically the end of a working day in the wood and therefore time for beer. For this reason the kitchen/shelter has brilliantly been named by its creator as "The Yardarm". I've often heard the phrase "the sun is over the yardarm", and have long known that it meant wine-o'clock, but never really knew where the phrase came from... so thanks to the urban dictionary, I now know that the yardarms on a sailing ship are the horizontal timbers mounted on the masts, from which the square sails are hung. At certain times of the year it will seem from the deck that the sun has risen far enough up the sky that it is above the topmost yardarm. In summer in the north Atlantic, where it's thought the phrase originated, this would have been at about 11am. This was by custom and rule the time of the first rum issue of the day to officers and men. It seems that officers in sailing ships adopted a custom, even when on shore, of waiting until this time before taking their first alcoholic drink of the day. Brilliant and a perfectly fitting name for our drinking decking at Rais.

The reverse of The Yardarm sign has also been inscribed... with a series of very apt runes as follows;

• Tiwaz/Tir (The war god "Tyr", often carved on weaponry) this is a rune of competitive spirit, fighting for what you believe in and extreme motivation.
• Odal/Othala (inheritance, possessions such as land, or the passing on of wealth or knowledge) Often an indication of being consumed by an idea or vision - inspired by the past.
• Ehwaz (Horse) a rune of physical movement, physical shifts, or new dwelling places. It's main significance is change. Change for the better. Stands for gradual development and steady progress.
• Jera (year or harvest) - signifies a reaping of rewards for efforts expended it is also the rune of justice and legalities.
• Ansuz (assopciated with Odin) meaning mouth, indicating the spoken word, the taking of advice or the acquisition of wisdom.
• Mannaz (man or humankind) A rune of interdependence - the receipt of aid or cooperation regarding the problem at hand. Honest and unbiased advice.
• Berkano/Beorc (associated with the birch tree, Idun, goddess of spring and with fertility) represents your true home, the home where your heart is as opposed to where you may be living now. Indicates a birth or the birth of an idea.
• Gebo/Gifu (a sacrifice to the gods, a gift) indicates a partnership and usually betokens peace and contentment.

A few of the runes appear more than once, this is because the runes are from an ancient Viking alphabet called "futhark" and spell out what we wanted to call The Yardarm originally.

Bow-Making : The Long Bow in Red Oak

The "Back" points away from you!

A British Summer weekend in July at The Woodcraft School - with the most talented Bushman. John Rhyder, his bearded assistant bowyer Phil, and Yolena, one seriously grumpy cook. Not forgetting of course the ten keen students, prepared to rough it in a drenched Hampshire woodland for 3 days of pain, injury, frustration and very little by way of liquid refreshment (alcoholic or otherwise).

Full days, 8am til 8pm, with military precision (including the porridge breakfast starts) still didn't seem enough to get done everything we needed to. In fact most of us didn't get to fire our own bows at the end of it either. There are many process steps and personally I think a 5 days course would have been better, certainly more relaxed, but we did the best we could in the time available and covered the following build steps, if only in theory for some;

6ft staves ready and waiting

John, drawing out - following the fibres

Stave Selection - choosing the right piece of wood to start from – bows need half sapwood and half heartwood all the way down the bow to bend correctly with the right compression, and knots (live or dead) need to be in certain places, so its’ life as a living tree is very important to its’ success as a bow later on. I had a hard time at the beginning remembering that the front is actually the back - but thinking of it in terms of heartwood being nearer my heart when drawing the bow and that being the inside of a tree trunk helped - when a living tree bends in the wind it is the heartwood that must compress and the sapwood that must stretch.  I had chosen a stave of red oak; a wood where these differences are far more obvious since the heartwood is red and the sap wood white - as well as it looking beautiful when finished and oiled  - a two-tone long bow.

Drawing Out - marking the stave in the right places before you cut/saw anything to ensure the bow comes from the correct section of the wood and is correctly in proportion. It starts with the centre line which believe it or not is not automatically straight - but must absolutely follow the fibres of the wood the entire length of the stave. The positioning of the grip must be considered along with decisions about weighting, knots and the strength of the person who will draw the bow when it's finished. Women's bows tend to be slightly thinner, as typically we can draw less weight.

D Sectioning or removing wood to shape the cross section of the bow all the way down to the tips into a "D" shape. Not necessary of course if you are making a flat bow as Ant and Alan had chosen to do - smart arses. To make matters even more complicated, the "D" must taper or shrink as it gets nearer and nearer to the tips of the bow! There were lots of fancy tools on offer to use; draw knives, shaves, saws, scrapers, hand axes and what I can only describe as a solid flat cheese grater (I later came to know it as a "rasper"). I decided I wanted to use only the tools I had back at home or Rais - just in case I felt the urge to go through the painful process all over again - plus of course I was completely useless, and quite scary, with some of the other tools and did not trust myself. This meant I was making by long bow with only a knife and a cabinet scraper. It was going to take a while.

Bowstring and Notching - next comes making the bow string itself, waxing it and then notching the bow at either end to ensure the bow string stays in place. When correctly strung, the bowstring should be about a "thumbs up" distance from the belly of the bow (the brace height) - although how one calculates what string length that represents whilst in the woods with a dead straight piece of D section and no ability to see into the future is a mystery to me - so we ploughed on using the trial and error approach, and taking a rough guess at the length of string required and an even rougher guess at the positioning of the loop at the top. We began twisting 12 strands of thread into single bowstrings, and then spent, quite frankly too much time and many frustrating attempts at undoing and remaking the string until it was roughly the right length ... thread wasn't the only thing fraying at this point in the course I can tell you - turns out this is not a job for people with large fingers. Then comes of course the dangerous and nerve-wracking activity of bending the bow to fit said string - which starts with.....

Floor tillering

Floor Tillering or warming up the fibres in the wood, encouraging them to bend - at the same time as sorting out the evenness of bending by removing tiny shaves of wood from the correct places and then warming again. Once the bend is starting to take shape, we move to do the same activity but this time on a tree-mounted tiller. This means we have to first go through the twitchy-bum moment of actually stringing the bow - during which I will admit I prayed - and I'm guessing I was not the only one. Bending a piece of dead straight wood you have spent hours shaping, to fit an infeasibly short piece of home-made string you have remade ten times, without breaking either of them or yourself is not for the feint-hearted.

Tillering - placing the strung bow on the tiller we attach a length of rope on a pulley and gently pull to warm up, bend some more, and check the curvature before deciding where to shave next, we do this for hours. An endless, repetitive cycle of warming, bending, shaving, warming, bending, shaving etc. Tillering has two objectives.... the first is to arrive at the archers draw length, which for a shorty like me is about 26 inches, and the second is to reach the desired draw weight - we did not get this far in the course, so I have no idea what weight my long bow is - but I suspect a session with my handheld luggage scales would soon tell me should I be that curious.

Tree Tiller

Tillering is a process that must be done in very small increments; shave off too much and the whole bow would need to be reduced in size all over to match, and then tillered again from the start, which would make it a much lighter bow and therefore less powerful - or worse.... you could shave off too much from one spot, to the point where it is irrecoverable and you must either start again with a new stave, or cut it down to make a child's bow - not pleasant - as poor Pedro found out on day one. Tillering must also be done very SLOWLY, or the bow will snap.
Warming the fibres cannot be overdone - particularly before attempting to string the bow, as it will need to be bent quite severely and awkwardly at the time (sadly something Pedro and I also discovered on day two whilst trying to string his second bow).

Arrow-Making and Fletching - as time on the two tillers was shared amongst the ten students, there was an amount of waiting time which we used to get started on making arrows. I should probably saying "assembling" arrows instead of making them, as all the components were bought-in items, we simply had to put them together using a number of tools and techniques. As a result, we each came away with 2 or 3 basic arrows in various states of completion - thankfully John had brought along his bucket of arrows for us to have a look at and perhaps practise with - had there been sufficient time at the end.


Oiling & Boning - three coats of linseed oil each with varying amounts of white spirit in and then a layer of beeswax  preceded by the peculiar (and still unconvinced) practise of "boning". Which basically involves taking a smooth pebble (or piece of rounded bone) and rubbing, with some pressure, and at high speed, down the length of the bow, to smooth the wood and bring out the shine. The aim being to tighten the wood on the surface of the bow and deter the fibres from lifting. Too much pressure however and you risk denting the wood instead of simply compacting the outer layer.

Serving - finally came the second (or was it third?) fiddly and frustrating task of the course - the serving. This is basically winding a tiny piece of thread round the bowstring at the point where you will notch your arrow from - so it's both indicative and decorative - I chose red - which has since turned a sort of fuchsia colour - but has at least remained attached in all the right places.

And there you have it - simple! - a traditional longbow, used during numerous successful battles as far back as the Anglo-Norman invasion; Crécy, Poitiers and of course the incredible defeat of the French in the battle of Agincourt over 500 years ago. The longbow as the dominant killer weapon had to come to an end at some point and that point is believed to be around the mid 1600's, the time of the English civil war - when they were sadly replaced with muskets and guns. It's good to see that the Bowyer skills of old are not dead yet though and that people like John Rhyder continue to pass on this knowledge for others to enjoy. 

Megan's Bird box

So last weekend we were chuffed to see that Megan's bird box was occupied and I set up the trailcam to watch the box to be certain which bird it was...
It was of course the blue tits that were nesting inside and the adults were often captured by the camera going in and out with caterpillars feeding the chicks.
However, moments later we see this woodpecker visiting the box. Now Great spotted woodpeckers are known to routinely attack nestboxes, especially those with tits nesting inside. They will drag nesting material out of the box and both eggs and chicks are lifted out and either eaten in situ or taken away for 'processing'. Although we have images of the woodpecker pulling nesting material out, thankfully there were no images of the chicks being pulled out.
Jays are also known to eat other birds eggs and chicks and as you can see this Jay was tempted, but perhaps he was a little too late?!  I visited the wood yesterday and the next box is now empty - I'm going to believe they all fledged successfully, (ignorance is such bliss).

The weekend after the one before

sheltering our fire from a spring hail storm

Friday afternoon at work could not go quick enough for me - after the big camping weekend of the bank holiday I was so looking forward to a quiet chill in the wood and Tracey did not disappoint... despite torrential rain and winds for most of the afternoon, by the time I got there she had the fire going, the tea brewing and the posh wine ready to open - she met every promise. We unwound by the fire watching "Ralph", our fireside rodent, munching away on some sorrel when all of a sudden we looked up and noticed a seriously black cloud approaching fast over the wayleave - we leapt into action and rigged up a tiny tarp over the fire with moments to spare before hail stones came hammering down on us... yes hail stones.... in late May! they were bouncing off the decking and making an incredible noise - fantastic experience. Thankfully it soon blew over and we enjoyed a gorgeous Rogan Josh with Pakora's, Bahjis and Samosas, washed down with a couple of bottles of decent red and some hours of catch-up chatter by a cosy fire.
By bedtime, the moon was up and two-thirds full, creating some incredible light - the damp vegetation and huge change in temperature had generated a serious amount of mist under the cables - in the moonlight it looked simply magical. Before bed at 1am I had cause to hike back to the car and surprised myself by being able to do it without a torch. Took a little longer than normal of course but it's quite astounding how easily your eyes adjust when there is zero light pollution around.

The only time are Rhodies are super stunning!

Saturday morning was bright and clear weather wise, but I had again not slept longer than a couple of hours at time so I found it quite hard to muster the energy to get up. Not sure what wakes me more; the pain of carpel tunnel in my hands and wrists, the temperature being too high in my sleeping bag, or the dawn chorus, but I really hope I can sort it out soon - it took me until Thursday to recover from the lack of sleep last weekend.
Ant arrived around lunchtime and set to work leveling out and lengthening the fire pit whilst Tracey and I were progressing well with the kitchen refit. We put in re-purposed pallet storage shelves and sorted out the work surfaces so they could double as seating areas in wet weather.

one fo the new kitchen storage shelves

Another bit of good news this weekend.... thrilled to notice that baby birds have hatched inside the bird box that Megan made for us at school - it's fixed at eye height right outside Tracey's tent where you can hear the little guys cheeping for food. The parents dive in and out so quickly that we haven't yet got a close enough look to see what they are - suspect tits.
Once the fire was up to temperature the large chicken was placed on the spit and our first ever camp fire roast dinner was underway - roast potatoes went into the larger dutch oven and the stuffing in the lidded skillet, then the veggies were steamed in the smaller dutchie. Sprouts were blanched in the kettle then marinaded in oil and wholegrain mustard before being roasted on skewers over the flames (thanks for the recipe page Rod).  All in all it took about 3.5 hours to cook and about 10 minutes to consume! but so worth the wait - it was truly delicious - covered in gravy and accompanied with some lovely wine. We have some timing tweaks to make for our next attempt but we are getting to grips with the pans now and how to better control the temperature of the fire - it's all a learning curve so we keep saying.

roast dinner on the go

We got to bed just in time as the heavens opened and did not stop throughout the night - yet again seriously broken sleep and a fair amount of water collecting on the tarps above my bed. We all stayed in bed til mid morning hoping the rain would subside but in the end the woodland won and we got cracking on a massive fry up breakfast omelette/cake. A mouse had got itself trapped in one of the storage boxes overnight - probably attracted to the huge sack of peanuts and bird seed in there - but clearly could not get out, so after a few failed attempts to catch him we ended up having to build him a little ramp to get out - cute little fella and not phased by us staring down at him at all.
Flee spent most of the day in the rain fixing guttering to the shelter so we can now harvest the rainwater and have "running" water in the kitchen while Ant tackled the slightly less appealing job of clearing out the loo!

New kitchen guttering

Tracey and I took down all the bedroom tarps and cleared everything away ready for the return to work tomorrow. Sad for another weekend to be over, but really pleased that the kitchen has finally been given the perfect name. As soon as the wooden sign is carved and hung, all will be revealed!

Bank Holiday Monday

Our last day started a little earlier than the others with a 1030am breakfast - bacon and egg sarnies for Ant and a mushroom and cheese Rolex for me (this time in our own iron skillet with the lid on) worked a treat although I possibly put a bit too much butter in with the egg! was yummy though.
Weekend drinking did have its plus sides too... it allowed Mungo to handcraft our awesome decorative "beer-catcher". Definitely not something to be consigned to Trap Number Two along with all our other woodland handicrafts. It's currently hanging on the side of the un-named kitchen/shelter.
We also took full advantage of having a load of muscles in camp on Monday, as a fallen tree was finally moved into position on the ridge to provide a long and fairly level bench with a fab view down into camp.
The next major camp will be the August bank holiday and all are in agreement that it would be a good time to dam the stream and create the pond which we have decided is best placed in the wayleave under the cables where it will get the most sun. It's also the point where two streams converge into one so makes a perfect spot with minimal digging as a deep-sided ghyll has already been formed over many years.
Sadly the afternoon was spent packing up camp and trekking back and forth to the parking area to load vehicles. We did however leave ourselves time to chat over plans for next weekend; some mods to the kitchen are needed for storage and some minor floor leveling is required around the fire area to ensure drinks have a steadier footing. We will also attempt to remove the tree stumps from the campfire area - which we discovered were a serious trip hazard in the dark! But the most exciting plan is to finally attempt a full roast dinner on the campfire using the spit and dutch ovens. Can't wait.

One year anniversary camp (Friday - Sunday)

I arrived into camp after work on Friday with my friend Caryn and a weekends supply of food, to find this gorgeous chicken roasting on a greenwood spit - it had been on a "high up" heat for an hour already and we turned it for another hour before moving it off to the side to "rest". It was succulent, still warm and very very tasty. We had it in pitta breads with pre-made butter containing spring onion, garlic and seasoning. Truly gorgeous and with zero washing up to do too. Top job Ant; Sunday roasts here we come.
After washing the chicken down with some very nice Rioja to mark the one year anniversary of becoming Rais wood's new custodians, I awoke on Saturday a little worse for wear; in truth, quite a lot worse for wear... it was lunchtime. Thankfully the kettle was on and there was still chicken and pitta left which partly revived me (unlike the head-dipped-in-the-pond method I had already tried).
The kids were off den-building for much of the day as new arrivals turned up and set up camp in the trees. A small woodland village was forming and the kitchen was filling fast with bags of food, drinks and cooking pans. This prompted me to actually work my way through my hangover by finishing the washing-up stand and having it ready for use. The extra cross-bracing has certainly made it much sturdier than it was before and the new joints look much better.
On Sunday morning after the boys fry-ups were all finished on the campfire, I borrowed Flee and Tracey's new cast iron skillet from Ronnie Sunshines to make a Ugandan Rolex. (mine contained shredded cabbage, carrot and onion in an omelette, rolled up in a flour tortilla) - the bottom did not stick at all, but the bottom had cooked long before the top had. Next time - I am putting a pre-heated cast iron lid on at the same time - to turn it into a mini oven.
After breakfast the men were left in camp to do man-stuff (log chopping, splitting and stacking) whilst we women, set off to clear the northern wayleave of Bracken by pulling up stems one-by-one from the base which grabs the root too - or at least part of it. Bracken has thick, fleshy, brown-black underground stems that can travel long distances, and in cool, woodland areas, bracken will germinate from spores carried in on the wind.  Bracken should not be eaten, either by humans or livestock, since it contains carcinogens linked with oesophageal and stomach cancer. Eating the young fronds, which are considered a delicacy in Japan and parts of North America, is definitely NOT recommended! One website states that "People who have spent all their lives living amongst bracken and breathing in the spores may be at higher risk of getting some cancers, but the danger to the general population and to casual visitors in bracken-infested areas is negligible.  People gathering bracken for composting or eradication purposes are advised not to do so in late summer when the spores are released, particularly in dry weather." So doing it now before the spores form is definitely the best option. Thanks guys for all the hard work - the wayleave north of the stream is now almost clear of Bracken and the wildflowers will once again have a chance to grow. The bracken will of course be back next spring and it will take a few years to get rid of the lot - but we will get there. Little and often.
The afternoon was much more sedate, Tracey teaching everyone to make para-cord bracelets and the kids swinging from trees above the mudslide. Lots of sunshine, lots of laughs and a few drinks to go with it - perfect.

Make your own flat-pack furniture

Wow - two glorious weekends in a row - this doesn't bode well for bank holiday weekend - we can't possibly get three in a row.. .can we?  It will be our first Rais group camp of the year and we are almost ready - The wood is looking truly magnificent (slightly biased of course) but the spring flowers have way exceeded my expectations and even the Rhodies are opening up their massive purple flowers making me almost forgive their rampant domination.

This weekend's task was supposed to be re-making the washing up stand (hindsight is such a wonderful thing - NOT!). Now that I have realised my mistakes and better learnt how to carve angled joints in round wood, I had every intention of spending a full day on it on Saturday. However, things didn't quite go to plan - I got up on time, made some venison burgers to take with us, nipped to B&Q for guttering fixings for "Trap Number 2" and a sharpening stone, then returned and stupidly upset the cat - ended up in A&E having my lip sewn back together! We got to spend just a few hours at the wood in the afternoon, relaxing and bark peeling instead.  So I didn't actually start on the washing up stand until this morning...

I drew a picture of it to start with and numbered every piece, then took the whole thing apart to re-do the joints. And after working on it from 830am for most of the day, I really think it's going to work this time (my fingers and thumbs are barely working anymore though) -  I am now waiting until the glue sets so I can put the top back together without needing 8 pairs of hands. I also added another couple of cross-braces which should help with the sturdiness.
My face is slightly swollen today and the stitches are in an awkward position making eating and drinking pretty tricky (not to mention painful) but hopefully the stitches will be taken out on Thursday in time for the big bank camp. Co-incidentally this Thursday is also the one year anniversary of our ownership of the wood so I had a look through some of the original photos I took on the first visit and thought I'd have a go at replicating some of them to create the start of a before and after book. So looking forward to seeing the gang round the campfire in a few days and sleeping 3 consecutive nights in my bivvy bag. Fingers crossed for a dry weekend.

Another glorious weekend - but today I have mostly been peeling bark

After some seriously high winds this week we were pleased to see that the new roof had fared particularly well - only the ends of the bark rolls had flipped over, but were still very much attached and undamaged. So Ant's first job was to put some additional wire onto the ends of each roll to tie them down whilst I set to work staining the new decking to give it a slightly longer life and help it to blend into the woodland - plants are already starting to grow up through the slats in just two weeks - at this rate it will become a striped green and brown decking by the start of the summer.
There wasn't much wood preservative left, so I used what remained to give the shed a little touch up, before moving to help Ant build our new "bedroom" in the southern bluebell section. We will leave the "in-camp" beds in situ for when there is just the two of us staying, but we wanted to build something more permanent slightly further away; we didn't want people to feel uncomfortable making any noise or movement in the mornings with us still sleeping right in the middle of camp... who am I kidding?... we just want to give ourselves the best possible chance of a decent undisturbed lie-in when everyone descends on the place in a couple of weeks time - kids don't know the meaning of the word hangover.
So.... we needed new stakes, new ridge poles and new bed poles to make A-frame beds that would hopefully last us a good while - so Ant made his from Oak and mine are half Oak and half Alder - which we now know is a hardwood which is great for making furniture for damp conditions. In fact the pilings that the watery city of Venice is built on are apparently made from Alder wood. Which is great because we have loads of it!
We used a tarp each to provide the back windbreak walls which will eventually be replaced with a woven willow/hazel screening - but we must wait for the right time to harvest the materials to enable a steady supply. So far I have only found two young willows and so we don't want to decimate them until they are properly established - but rather harvest a few rods at a time and build the walls over a number of seasons. Tarp is fine for now - it will protect us from the wind and rain, it's just a little noisy - but I'm guessing no worse than my snoring.

We then spent a good few hours whittling away by the unlit campfire peeling bark from the remainder of the Oak ready for seasoning and chair making - Ant is going for a Viking throne and I am attempting a solid Nordic rocker. Of course I may just end up with a stool - but I'm looking forward to giving it a go.
We left the wood about 730pm just as the sun had dipped below the tree line and the midges were munching - really really really should have lit the campfire - definitely NOT making that mistake again.

yellow archangel

Come Sunday morning we were back bright and early and I took a good walk round to see which wildflowers had come into bloom in the last week or so since I last looked - we now have pink Herb Roberts to add to the mass of spring yellows and purples. It's so beautiful I was overwhelmed at one point... down by the ghyll, where we first started clearing almost a year ago, the flora has been completely revived. Removing the thick evergreen Rhododendron and allowing the light to reach the ground, combined with the foot traffic churning up the woodland floor has created an amazing carpet of flowers of all colours, shapes and sizes - I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. A little bit of effort goes such a long way in the wild woodland garden - the rewards are immense. I can't wait to see how the northern section recovers next year - because the Rhodie there was impenetrable.

So after my little emotional moment I had a word with myself and returned to the campfire, where I found Ant stripping the bark from his Oak bed poles and the other pieces he had reserved to make his throne. The sun was shining, the fire was lit and it wasn't long before the sausages were sizzling.
My sister had joined us for lunch and from her single seat by the fire managed to spot a very well camouflaged small frog to the side of her on the bank as well as our resident (as-yet un-named) bank vole that lives in the hole underneath the bird feeders.  Kenneth The Second came over to say hello and three Buzzards were circling directly over our heads for a while calling to each other - noisy buggers.
Spent a glorious afternoon in the sunshine, chatting, whittling, planning the next few projects and marveling at the birdsong - all the while generating huge piles of bark strippings and quite a few minor nicks with the knife. Happiness is only a woodland away.