Friday 21 November 2008

Back to Danemead Part 3

It was a reasonably nice night so I decided to sleep outside, rather than in Stuarts tipi. I can't remember the last time I used my hammock, so I set it up and then used my black sleeping bag bag and bivvy bag from my modular sleep system together with a 3/4 length mat inside. If I do not carry a mat with me but have my Swanndri hooded bushshirt as insulation in the bottom of my hammock and it works very well. After a very comfortable nights sleep I was awoken at about 7am by Stuart reviving the fire and getting the kettle on.

Once the kettle was on Stuart started to prepare breakfast, so I decided I should get up and give him a hand.

After breakfast I walked around the site with Stuart and Acer to show them the right types of wood to collect for different parts of the bow-drill. We gathered Hazel (Corylus avellana) for all parts of the set with the exception of the bearing block for which we used HornBeam (Carpinus Betula).

We made a couple of bow-drill kits from the materials collected and Stuart was keen to give having spent a lot of time recently trying without success. Within 15 minutes he had his first ember and then proceeded to produce a second ember a minute later.

After a late lunch we sat and chatted and then mid-afternoon we headed home.

2 comments:

Iowa Woodsman said...

Looks like a good time was had by all. I am going out in the hills with the scouts this weekend. I an going to take lots of pics and maybe some video.

Fenlander said...

Great Stuff mate. Hope you have a good time and I look forward to your write up of the trip.