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.