I had hoped to do a camp-over yesterday but the weather forecast for today was horribly wet, so I plumped for just spending the day there, having another “easy” day just doing a few jobs and enjoying being in the woods. It was one of those days when the “Black Dog” seemed to be barking at my heels, so I was hoping a day at the woods would shake him off. I took my usual walkabout and decided to check the ash saplings that I had suspected have succumbed to Chalara (ash dieback disease). They didn’t seem much worse and I continued the walk looking for any signs in other areas. I spotted two saplings that I had not previously seen which looked very sick, the dead leaves hanging on the thin branches like sleeping bats.

Black Dog barked as my heart sank. I felt I needed to check my neighbours’ plot. If it is Chalara then I am sure there would be similar sickly specimens among their many ash saplings. Sure enough I found numerous ones looking just like this. Black Dog took a bite at my ankle. The gloom of the woods seemed to intensify and my piece of paradise was feeling somewhat shabby around the edges. I will need to report the disease to the Forestry Commission. It’s a statutary requirement but at present there is no other requirement to do anything (like felling and burning). I shall closely monitor the situation. There are hundreds of ash saplings around the woods and some areas look perfectly healthy at present, so hopefully some of them might have a natural resistance to the disease.

Physical work can help keep the dog at bay so I set-to chopping more logs. I heard a whistle and looked up to see Alan, one of my other neighbours heading down the ride. He always welcomes me with a genuine smile and solid handshake. He’s a very resourceful person and we always have lots of woodlandy chat. I was telling him I planned to make a shave-horse for the woods but was struggling to source a plank from my logs to use as the bench part. He kindly offered a piece of his larch that he has planked using a portable sawmill device. We headed to his place and left Blackie sleeping. I returned with a beautiful two inch thick plank about four and a half feet long and about fifteen inches wide – ideal for my shave horse.

By which time my other next door neighbours had arrived. I took them to see the sick ash saplings so they would know what to look for and just as second witnesses. We had a nice chat over a mug of coffee and a piece of bakewell tart and I showed them how to make bramble cordage. I carried on chopping wood and before I knew it, it was time to pack up. I looked around for “Blackie” but he seemed to have taken his leave for now.

Yesterday’s weather was due to be hot so I planned an “easy” day doing a few small jobs and some bushcrafting. I drove down in the mist and arrived at a quiet wood at 7.45am. I love an early start when it feels like I’m the only person there and it gives me a good seven or eight hours in my woodland sanctuary. I’d spent a day at my friends wood on Sunday and got badly bitten by the mosquitos but this year, they haven’t bothered me much at mine. As well as there being too many mossies at his woods, he also had lots of beautiful damsel flies. I managed to get a good photo of one.

So what’s good about bramble apart from the edible berries (which I get very few of)? After all the bramble-hating stuff I’ve said, I can see them in a slightly favourable light, after watching a video of someone making cordage from the fibres in the stems. I had a quick qo at it on Sunday and found it makes incredibly strong cordage and what’s more, because they grow so long, you can get very long lengths of fibre which means less splicing-in of new pieces. I cut two long stems and processed them down to the fibres which lie just below the outer skin. It’s a similar method to making nettle cordage but you gently scrape off the outer green skin first whereas with nettles it is the outer skin that you use. You then gently bruise the stem with a stick to release the fibres from the inner pith, then pull them away. It’s tougher then nettle fibre but easy enough to work with and you can get thicker and longer cordage in less time and having to cut fewer stems. This is the piece I made quickly yesterday. It’s about a metre long and took just over half an hour to make.

After digging up the limestone rocks the other week, I wanted to use some of it to rebuild one of my campfires (I have two). The old one was built from an assortment of bricks and oddments from home and didn’t really look the part. I used the two old firebricks (which are flat) to make a hearth,then built the rocks around in a semi-circle. A small piece of paving stone at the front acts like a sort of hot plate to stand a pot or kettle on when cooking. Building it was a bit like doing a 3D jigsaw puzzle and a bit of a balancing act, trying to get the irregular rocks to lock together slightly to make a stable structure. I added clay around the base to stabilise them further. Two house bricks can be placed inside to support a metal grill when cooking over embers. I didn’t get time to light it and it will look better once it’s had a few fires in it.

What else? Just a few log-related jobs but I won’t bore you with the details. I’ll just leave you with a few photos.

Yesterday, my priority was to take the summer season fixed point photographs for my Woodland Trust volunteering role. I have three sets now – Winter, Spring, Summer and comparing photos of each location it’s quite interesting. Some areas look hugely different either due to work having been done or the seasonal change in foliage etc. Whereas some areas, where no work has been done and where they tend to be dark and dingy, there is very little change over the seasons. I can’t show you them now because the files are too big for this blog but at some stage I would like to edit a few down and post them.

As usual I had intended doing all sorts of jobs but it ended up mainly doing some “housekeeping” for my logs. I have piles of  logs on the ground waiting for a place to stack so they can dry out and season ready for fuel. I had a tidy up in the log shed so that I could move some of last years logs into it and make way for this years stack. In the coppice area I wanted to create a new stack for the logs I cut up last visit. I did some bramble pulling, laid an old wooden pallet down and started building the stack. It’s one of those labour intensive jobs but a satisfying one. Here’s how it’s looking so far. I shall be adding to it later.

Lunchtime and a chance to get a bit creative. I wanted to make a hanging hook for my rucksack and jacket or hat. An easy project, just need some pieces of forked branch and some twine. I thinned and flattened the tops, then drilled a hole through using the cranked awl that my blacksmith mate made for me. (Hope you see this S.R.) Then threaded two hooks onto the twine and fastened it around a small tree next to my table and work area. Nice to have some home comforts in the woods. As my bushcraft mate says “we are not roughing it, we are smoothing it”. These little things that we can do, can make time spent in the woods so much easier.

For a few weeks I have kept smelling the familiar gassy smell of stinkhorn fungi (phallus impudicus). Even though they are white, they are hard to spot, usually lurking under some thick bramble. Whilst making my coathook I spotted one nearby. It has fallen or been pushed over but still pristine and attracting a fair bit of attention from the fly residents. It’s a beauty – small but as we know, size doesn’t matter!

I’m a bit late writing up this post, it was saturday 1st July when I last went. July already? The two shots above are pretty much from the same position, the first taken back in November after brushcutting all the bramble and nettles down and the second shot is how it looks now. The regrowth is amazing.

It was a fairly quiet day, I was expecting a few neighbours but only met one. It was a day of doing a few bits here and there. I was feeling low in energy and didn’t want to overdo things as we were going to be up early the next day to do a car boot sale. So first up was a long slow walkabout. I wanted to check other areas for ash dieback disease and think I spotted a few saplings. I think there might be signs of some of the mature trees having it as there seemed to be a lot of fallen dead leaves.

My first planted hazel saplings are now in their third year and it was nice to see this one poking it’s head out of the plastic tube. I spent some time clearing some of the rampant growth that the bramble and nettles have made around some of the saplings. This hazel bush is one of the stumps given to me by a friend and only planted this spring. I was worried the long dry season might see them off before they could make new roots but it’s looking very healthy. I haven’t time to net it so I’m hoping the deer will leave it alone.

I spent some time sawing up logs that I’d left littering the coppice area and cut a couple of hefty logs from a large felled sycamore to see if I could get some stool seats out of it. It had been down a couple of months but as it was in one piece still, it hadn’t dried out much at all. Not much else to tell but I’m heading there again tomorrow so check back in a couple of days for an update.