The forecast yesterday was heavy cloud in the morning, rain in the afternoon. It’s going to be another two weeks before I can go again so I decided to embrace the prospect of a rainy afternoon, not focus too much on jobs that need doing but just enjoy being there – the peace and healing I get from being close to nature. I could sit under my shelter and do some crafts. So I made a list of possible activities in the shelter. Pimp it with a coat hook and some shelves, make a bench, process some nettles for drying to make cordage, carve some antler bone into toggles, make a firepit and stack some logs to keep dry etc. The shelter is usable but still needed one side building and more branches to fill the gaps, so my plan was to gather as much material as I could find in the morning, carry on building until it rained, then do my crafts in the afternoon.

As I approached, a beautiful fox ran across the road, resplendant in it’s rusty coloured coat and carrying it’s breakfast in it’s mouth. The wood was quiet and dark and I set-to straight away ferrying suitable long logs from here and there, back to the shelter, cutting and stacking them to build the sides. My wheelbarrow cracked under the weight of them, I need something much stronger for this type of work and it was just a cheapo plastic one. So the job took much longer, manually carrying dozens of stout logs is time consuming but somehow satisfying in a manly sort of way. I wondered how many 65 year olds would even think of exerting themselves like this and how odd it might seem to some people that I was doing it to build a den in the woods. Shouldn’t you grow out of those activities when you reach your teens? Nah! I spent at least half my time on the shelter. I pimped it slightly with a couple of stout log stumps which can be stools, coffee tables or work benches. Starting to look a bit more homely now.

I took a break mid morning, had a brew and started processing some tall nettles to dry. My bushcraft mentor, Phil, told me you can dry them for making cordage later. I want to have a go at making some just for the fun and learning experience. It’s a bit of a painstaking exercise, but sitting in the sun and watching two Speckled Brown butterflies was a relaxing time. One of the butterflies kept landing on a bench, wings wide open, sunning itself. Another appeared and it started to chase it in that fluttery, butterfly-sort-of-dance they do. I couldn’t tell whether it was chasing it off or hoping for some buttefly nookie! I had a three sessions of nettle-stripping (you crush the stems then peel of strips of the outer fibres, discarding the brittle pith. It looks like a bunch of long grass when finished. This was the produce of about a dozen stalks and an hour’s work.

Nettle fibres ready for drying

Whilst gathering the nettles, I was getting tangled up in some long bramble runners. I started pulling at them to see if they would uproot easily and the surprise was – yes. I’ve tried in other areas before and it was really hard but for some reason it was easy here. I carried on and quickly cleared a small area. I found it incredibly satisfying and continued for about an hour. By the end of it I had cleared a substantial area and built a large pile which I’ll leave to dry and eventually burn. The bonus was discovering hundreds of young ash saplings growing away nice and healthy. Previously this area had been used as a pheasant pen and there was little growing on the ground. I suspected it was due to the birds eating every seed that fell and it’s encouraging to see this fairly barren area starting to regenerate now. There are quite a few ground cover plants taking over too.

An hour’s worth of bramble pulling.

Rather than rain setting in, the afternoon brightened and I was able to achieve a lot. Not much of it from my list but the bonuses of an almost-finished shelter and several square metres of bramble-free gound, left me feeling very satisfied. I sat in my shelter for a while admiring the view and my days work and left tired, mossie-bitten but very contented.

view from the shelter

It’s been difficult to find time to get to the woods the last few weeks so I was looking forward to my visit. I find that if I have long breaks between visits, I start to lose some of the special connection I feel to it. It starts to feel detached from me, somehow remote and I don’t like that. So when I do visit, it sort of re-establishes that connection. The day was dull but dry and I arrived nice and early at 8am. Two other woodlanders arrived at the same time which was nice just to touch base with them. My aims were primarily to cut, split and stack more of my huge pile of logs left from felling last winter and have a little “play” at my bushcraft. My usual initial walkabout discovered some recent and shocking grey squirrel activity. They chew the bark off smooth barked trees. This one has been ring-barked by them since I was last there. It annoyed and saddened me becuase it’s a beautiful straight-trunked beech tree, probably 60+ years old and it is likley to die now.

squirrel damaged beech tree

I spent a good part of the day on the log splitting jobs. There are two piles and I decided to start on the smallest, a pile of longish lengths that first needed chainsawing down to smaller pieces ready for chopping. As I lifted them off, a small brown mousey animal jumped out and disappeared into the bramble in a flash. I found a pile of fluffy material that must have been it’s nest. I couldn’t just pile the logs back up in case there were babies in it that might get crushed so I carefully started to poke around in it. There was a squirmey movement and out popped a small toad, then another. Clearly this pile had become an animal hotel. I cut some logs into smaller sections and built a smaller version, more like an animal bungalow, so they can continue using it for shelter. The other log pile is huge and I keep chipping away at it. The stack is growing nicely but still a lot left to process.

the large log pile and stack

I found a bargain piece of kit at a car boot sale last week. A swedish army M40 mess kit for the huge sume of £3. It’s quite a large bulky item but very versatile. It consists of a brass Trangia spirit burner, a wind shield-cum-burner-holder, a largish billy can, a smaller one that is also a mess tin and lid and a plastic bottle for the spirit fuel. So I took that to give it a try out and have a brew with. It took about 10 minutes to boil a mug full of water. It is smoke and soot free and the fuel is cheap enough. I like it and it will probably get used regularly at the woods as a simple and clean method when I can’t be bothered making a fire. The mess tin has a couple of D rings on the short handle. They are so you can insert a stick to extend it and avoid burning your hand – neat eh?

The mess kit in it’s packed form. I added the leather strap.

The windshield and Trangia spirit burner

the mess tin and water on the boil.

My other bushcraft exercise was to have a go at making nettle cordage – a traditional country craft. You take a long stalk, strip the leaves then smack the stem on a solid surface with something to crush and split it. You can then seperate out the hard brittle core from the fibrous part which is then twisted in a special way to make a type of string. My results were – well, crap to be honest but it was fun to have a go. I need to consult my bushcraft mate who is an expert in such things.

I’ve made some good progress with my shelter over the last few visits. The roof is on (though I might need to upgrade the cheapo tarp I used.) The back and one side is partially complete but I need to add more logs/branches to cover some of the gaps. At least it’s waterproof enough now to use if a sudden shower catches me and I’m quite pleased with it. It’s an ongoing project and time consuming, collecting the dead branches from around the woods so I just have to be patient and keep doing a bit each time.

inside of the shelter

outside of the shelter