It’s been a few weeks since my last visit. We have had almost continual rain since then, so yesterday was a welcome break and some much needed nature therapy. I had a few jobs I wanted to do. For a long time I have been wanting to repair the roof of the little logstore that I have near my campfire. It’s made from old pallets and logs. The roof covering has always been some cheap plastic tarp which is far from ideal. It disintegrates after a few years and was providing no waterproofing for my logs. After a sort out of my cellar at home, I found some pieces of roofing felt and rough wooden planks. The structure of the roof was a bit shaky too so the planks were used to strengthen it first and add a small shelf area for storing various fire irons and metal grills for cooking. I’m pleased with the result and the roof should last a long time now, keeping the logs for the campfire nice and dry.
Whilst working, a robin came to suss me out. I haven’t seen many since Bertie disappeared in spring, so it was nice. Later, I noticed three or four rather scruffy ones bobbing about and I reckon they are young ones. So hopefully they will get to know me and maybe become the next “Bertie” who I trained to take food from my hand.
One of my tables, also made from a pallet, had started to rot away. It’s a useful table that I use regularly, so the next job was to try to prolong it’s life with the remaining wooden planks. Now I am a bit of a perfectionist by nature but I I didn’t have enough matching planks to replace the whole top or for them to match. But needs must and at the end of the day, I have to remind myself that it just needs to be functional and on that score it fulfills one of William Morris’s requirements when he said “Have nothing in your house that is neither useful or that you believe to be beautiful”. When I look at it, it makes me smile, more Heath Robinson that William Morris.
Another woodland project I am playing with is mapping my woods. I have a basic one but after watching a fantastic video on making your own personalised and artistic map, I started to plan my own. It’s not meant to be Ordnance Survey standard, merely a visual picture of features and where they are. Still I wanted a certain amount of scale and accuracy so I downloaded a GPS app on my phone so I could take co-ordinates of the various key areas to use as a starting point. Not sure if it’s going to be of much use though because the relatively small area of the woods means that the variations of readings from one place to the next are tiny and probably not usable. I’ll let you know how it worked out but here’s a link to the video. I really like this idea.
I managed to lose my bushcraft knife again! This time the whole sheath with knife in it detached itself from the belt coupling. Despite having a bright orange cord loop through the handle, the black colour of the knife is hard to spot on the ground. I spent about an hour retracing all my movements but to no avail. It’s not an expensive knife but is useful and it really annoys me when I lose anything.
Anyway, overall it was a very enjoyable day and did my mental state a world of good. Here’s a few photos taken on my walkabout and the mapping link I mentioned.
