Sorry, no new photos for this part but we were pretty busy most of the day and I just forgot. I’d planned to do breakfast making a cook in and eat out of the billy can apple and cinnamon crumble, using dried apple rings, powdered custard and mashed up biscuits. The woodland was awake and full of birdsong and comings and goings as they fed their young.  Light-headed and dazed from lack of sleep, I started a new fire and made a coffee, whittled some hazel to make useful toggles and felt strangely alive and contented. Simon was having a lie in, so I carried on making use of the free time, taking my tent down and packing my sleeping gear away. I knew Simon didn’t really do breakfast so abandoned the apple crumble idea and staved my hunger with a piece of fruit cake made by my dearest.

We spent the rest of the morning leisurely, had a look in a hollow tree trunk to see five baby Great tits and backed off to watch the parents return to feed them, beaks loaded with bright green caterpillars. Both my woodland neighbours arrived later. I had a recipe for cooking eggs in hollowed-out tomatoes and wanted to try that for lunch. Method – cut the top off a large beefsteak tom. and scoop out the seeds and middle. Break an egg into it and season with sea salt and black pepper. Wrap in kitchen foil and place in hot embers to cook for about 15 minutes. Again the fire was hardly sufficient but they turned out well and in fact were delicious. I’ll do those again.

We decided to break camp and pack everything away leaving the rest of the afternoon to try one more new thing – archery. We had both done a short archery experience day and bought a beginners recurve bow kit. My woodland neighbour has also done some and set up a target in his woods and kindly allowed us to use it. He arrived too and we had a first play at being Robin Hood’s merry men. My arrow shots were all over the place, partly because the bow wasn’t set up correctly but mainly because I was crap (must try harder next time). Simon also had a powerful traditional bow which managed to pierce the target and the old wooden shed it was hanging on. Sadly it was a short-lived session, 5pm came around quickly and I needed to get back home for a shower and some home comforts. I was still a little light headed from lack of sleep.

To sum up, the whole weekend was a fatntasic success and one I shall remember for a long time. Great weather, great company, nice food and we learned a lot from it and had fun in the process. Isn’t that how life should be? The main lesson to learn is good fire management if you want to cook. It’s not as simple as putting logs on and hanging your pots over it. Controlling heat to avoid food burning, yet cook correctly, is a real art. You need to create a good bed of embers or coals that will last long enough. I suspect one of the problems was due to the type of wood I was burning – sycamore which burns away to ashes too quickly. It’s the one fuel I have in abundance though. It might be worth me trying to find some seasoned oak or ash to put to one side specifically for cooking. If you’ve read this far, thanks for your interest, leave a comment if you like (it will appear later when I approve it) and if you get the chance to camp in a woodland, it’s highly recommended.  I headed home with a head full of great memories and some nasty mossie bites on my hands, A small price to pay for a priceless weekend.