Not much time remaining now before the leaves burst into a bright lime green ceiling in camp so we cracked on with the clay base for the oven by building a hazel "hurdle" wall to shelter it from the wind coming from the South.Flee got stuck into dam deconstruction in preparation for the rebuild over the coming weeks and Ant ensured the new chairs in the Immac hide were securely bolted down and the tilt and slide is all functioning perfectly ... we felt like we were making good progress.
Trap number two is surrounded by primroses in full bloom and the birds are busy making nests and gorging themselves on the seeds and peanuts. We stopped to gorge ourselves on hot broccoli and stilton soup before stake-making yet again. This activity is not one Tracey and I excel at, and we have always blamed the weight of the axe we use to point the stakes up with - we just cannot seem to hit the stake in the same point consistently - the axe is forever wobbling around on the down stroke. We came up with a design for a giant pencil sharpener which was promptly ridiculed by the boys as a non-starter and so we hacked away at some chunky sticks for a while and eventually managed to get enough of them hammered into the solid clay to form a low retaining wall between the kitchen and the clay oven area. Now all we need is buckets and buckets of clay!
We switched jobs after a bit and started scalloping a level base for pitching a tent near the "spider stump", and using the soil to back fill the seat wall around the campfire. We have a long way to go, but it's a start at least.
