Update

It is not yet warm enough to comfortably sleep outside without a sleeping bag. Were one to attempt such a thing they would probably wake up at about 2am feeling not very happy and quite cold. Fortunately by 6am the sun begins to throw out some heat.

Hammock

I had another go at sleeping in a hammock last night, I didn’t get too hot but I did wake up shivering. It was really uncomfortably – I felt as though both my hips had come out of joint. I woke up every time I had to roll over and spent a lot of the night with my feet higher than my head. Horrible. In case it rained I had to put a tarp out over me and so I couldn’t see the sky, might as well of been in a tent. When I sleep on the ground I now, unless it looks as though it is really going to bucket down, I leave the tarp on the ground next to me; that way if it does start to rain I can pull it over me like a sheet and keep dry that way. It did rain last night and I got wet even with the tarp up. I assume I got wet; the sleeping bag was soaking when I got into it my morning it looked as though it had dried out due to my body heat and then had got a bit wet from the rain. It also feels really exposed dangling about in the air like that, it’s not natural I tell you. Hammocks are all very well on the beach, there was one I found outside a hotel when I was living on the beach in the Cayman Islands that was basically a thin mattress suspended between two trees, that was alright, it was like lying on a wobbly bed. I slept on that for a while, it was great I was there at the start of hurricane season so when it rained all I had to do was roll out of the hammock in such a way that I landed on the sand underneath the hammock and managed to tip it over at the same time, this way the sleeping side stayed dry. That way I could sleep in the shelter of the solid mattress until it stopped raining at this point it was simply a matter of tipping the hammock back over and going back to sleep. That’s what hammocks are all about, Caribbean island, coconut trees, cocktails with umbrellas in, warm weather and lots of waves.

The Old Man is Snoring

Whilst it is much warmer now than it has been for a very long time I was surprised to discover that it is still to cold to sleep out comfortably without a sleeping bag; if one were to do so next to a river, the Thames perhaps, one would get rather damp and miserable during the course of the night.

On Sundays there is no where to go for breakfast in Oxford before 8 O’clock unless you count MacDonald’s; I don’t.

The march towards summer moves relentlessly on and it continues to get greener and hotter, I’m still using my winter sleeping bag and it is getting to be a bit uncomfortably warm on occasion, last night was just such an occasion. Regular readers, gawd bless em, will be aware that I am prone to the odd flash of genius; there was a flash of realisation. I would be less warm without the bivi bag, the bivi bag is a vaguely waterproof bit of nylon with holes in from being too close to the fire that goes over the sleeping bag to keep the rain out. When I started off I had no bivi bag and I did just fine without it. Well I got wet quite a lot but when I put the poncho up I would keep dry if it rained. It seemed sensible then, what with it being warm and everything now to remove the bivi bag, after all it had not rained, not properly anyway, for a couple of weeks, I had a shelter and no reason to suspect that should there be a thunderstorm water would flow uphill. So keen was I to have a comfortable night after the previous night’s debacle by the river that I even went and un-stashed the emergency sleeping bag for use as a pillow.

There was a thunder storm; it started just before dawn this morning. There was only one peel of thunder but the amount of rain more than compensated for the lack of flashes and bangs. This shouldn’t have been a problem after all I have an army poncho thing that can be put up and made into a shelter called a Basha, this is Hindi for hasty shelter I believe. Only for the last few months I have not been using the poncho, I have been using a small bit of tarp that is slightly the wrong size for what I want it to do. My head sticks out of one end and my feet the other, it’s not much but I call it home. When the first and only peel of thunder woke me I cunningly curled up so that all of me was under the shelter of the tarp, after about half an hour or so I tired of this game and needed to stretch out. Not wanting to get too hot I just put the bivi bag over the section of the sleeping bag that would be sticking out into the rain. The head end, could just get rained on, for some reason I don’t mind my head getting rained on but it really bothers me when my legs get wet. The emergency sleeping bag that I had was using as a pillow had been left out in the rain, fortunately it has a waterproof layer on one side, unfortunately that wasn’t the side that was left exposed to the elements. I found a dry patch to lie on stretched out and went back to sleep.

Half an hour later I rolled over, I wasn’t very keen on the way my sleeping bag went squelch and I got wet, I woke up again and investigated. My self inflating (although it no longer does) Thermarest Mattress (punctured) was doing a very fine job of collecting all the water that fell on it at the foot end and gathering in a big puddle at my knees and then filtering down into the bivi bag and soaking my sleeping bag. This shouldn’t have happened, I sleep on a slight slope with my head raised and the water should have run off. I guess it ran to the indentation caused by the weight of my body on the vaguely inflated mattress rather than to the ground. Unperturbed I pulled the bivi bag up to my waist and went back to sleep. Occasionally I was woken by a drip of water, anyone who has tried to sleep in a room with a dripping tap will know how annoying this is, it is even more annoying if the drip lands squarely on the tear duct of your right eye. On the forth occasion this happened I pulled the rapidly dampening hood of my sleeping bag over my head.
It was not long before I was again woken by the squelch of sleeping bag and the sudden application of cold water to my middle. The puddle was now firmly in residence all the way to the middle of the Thermarest, my sleeping bag was soaking, I ignored it and went back to sleep reasoning that I would dry the sleeping bag at work.

Eventually it got light, the rain was still pouring down and there was a light mist in the air, this is what the woods should look like in spring, much more natural than this drought that we have been having of late. I lay on my side and took in the world, a dark circle above me marked out the perimeter of the Yew tree that has sheltered me so well all winter, the green needles that are it’s leaves reflected in the circle of dead ground beneath the tree, nothing grows beneath the tree, I know not if this is due to the lack of light that penetrates it’s cover or the fact that Yews are toxic. Between the darkness of the branches and that of the dead ground there lives a stripe of brilliant green, the new life of Hazel and Beech leaves.

The walk to the bus was amazing, it was as though I could feel the forest drinking in the rain that it needs so desperately. Out in the field a few Dandelion Clocks stood soggily against the rain, the fluffy seed heads bunched together like hair on a wet cat. The Dandelions themselves, like the Buttercups and Daises, closed, protecting themselves against the vicious downpour or because the clouds had covered enough of the light to make them react as though it was night time I don’t know although I suspect the former. Waiting for the bus I occupied myself with finding a book to read and sneezing. The bus came and with its momentum sucked me from my rural idyl to the grey of the motorway, wipers squeaking the rain drumming on the windscreen stopping momentarily every now and again to mark the passing of a bridge. So to London, grey and miserable Monday morning off to work, I would rather be in the woods, anywhere but here. There was a queue at the drycleaners and so I decide to come back at lunch time. Maybe they could dry my sleeping bag as well. Maybe they could have, but I got called to another office and so now after work I have to go back across London, pick up my dry cleaning, take it to the office pick up my rucksack and grab enough clothes, including work shirts, for the next three days and head off to the woods. Looks like I will not be back until about eight o’clock tonight then. I rather suspect that my shirts might have got a little creased by tomorrow, probably less creased than they get when I stick them in the internal post.

I feel like I should write something but I can't think what.

The Green Green Grass of Home

So everything is green now, I woke up this morning and all that I could see was green. It can be quite overwhelming at times the speed with which spring sprung. It is very welcome all this green, it is as though my home has been redecorated courtesy of nature, “I just lurve what you’ve done with the place dahling, so much brighter than those ghastly winter greys”.

I ordered a sharpening stone for my knife from Ray Mears’ online shop and it arrived yesterday. As soon as I got back home I started sharpening my knife. Well as soon as I had got home, dropped my bag down, took my top off, drunk some water and cooled off a bit I started what I thought was sharpening my knife. Five minutes later I found that the knife was blunter than when I had started. It seems that sharpening knives on a stone is not one of those innate skills that one has. I got out one of the survival books that I have in my rucksack and read up on how to sharpen knives and had another go. This time I ended up with a knife that was sharper than it was before I blunted it, all good then. Then I sharpened my large knife as well; neither knife ended up sharp enough to shave with unfortunately. Hopefully by the time I get back from the year in the jungle I will be sharpening a knife to razor sharpness and shaving with it. That would be cool and it would save a fortune in razors.

Plants, there are lots of plants now doing that growing and being green thing. Did I mention how green it is? It’s pretty green out there now. Among the plants that I fined around me are nettles and I seem to remember agreeing to make cordage out of nettle stalks sometime so I best get amongst that task sometime soon. Worryingly I said I would make the cordage without the use of gloves. I know I used to be able to pick nettles bare handed without being stung, but can I still do so? Some people say the trick is to be very gentle with them and that if you are they wont sting you. Others say the trick is to be firm and direct and if you are you won’t get stung. Both are true, the trick is to believe that you will not get stung, if you think you will get stung you will. It sounds odd but it is true. At least that’s what I thought when I was young. There is a possibility though that I had been stung so often that I had built up a tolerance and so I could do whatever I liked with them with impunity. Yesterday I decided to pick a nettle to see what would happen. I mentally prepared my fingers to not get stung, leant down and picked a nettle without my fingers getting stung. I was most pleased, I was less happy when the nettle I was holding in my right hand brushed my left and stung it. I went and picked some Teasles instead, I discovered a couple of days ago that it is really easy to light a Teasle with a FireSteel. Teasles have very prickly stems, I spent quite some time yesterday getting prickles out of my hands.

I’m not going to be making cordage just yet but I will be cooking with nettles tonight, I’m going to have a bit of a look around and see what else I can find that is edible. There are a few sheep about but I reckon the farmer might have a bit of a sense of humour failure if I cooked one.

Spring pasta dish, sans pasta.

Two salmon steaks
3 spring onions
7 cherry tomatoes (could have done with more tomatoes but that was all I had)
1 small tub ½ fat crème fresh
Salt
Pepper
Nutmeg


BBQ two salmon steaks lightly on each side and then wrap in a silver foil parcel and put them back onto the rack over the fire.
Sweat the garlic and sliced spring onions in butter for 3 or 4 minutes in a frying pan / billy can / pie tin.
Increase the heat under the garlic and onions and the cherry tomatoes, salt, pepper and nutmeg.
Once the tomatoes are cooked (they should be falling apart) remove from the heat and stir in the crème fresh. Then place over a gentle heat and heat slowly, do not boil! Once warmed removed from the heat.
By now the salmon should be cooked; the side that was directly over the heat should be a rich almost caramelised brown and the rest light and pink. Remove the skin and bones and add chunks of the salmon to the crème fresh mix.

This would go very well with tagliatelli; I chose not to have it with pasta as I had no water to cook it in, there was a brief moment in which I considered using lemonade instead but something stopped me.

A little bit of freshly chopped parsley would have gone well with it.

Cheese on Toast

Mike set me a challenge the other day, he wanted cheese on toast.

I can make toast, I have a cooling rack that I can put over the embers of a fire and toast bread that way, doing this and then putting some cheese on top wont do – apparently. What was needed to make proper cheese on toast was a grill; the problem then is how to get a source of heat from above. I figured it out over the weekend; it is indeed possible to make cheese on toast in the woods.

1st light a fire, whilst the fire is gaining momentum choose four dead branches about 12cm across and about half a meter long. Place two of the logs on the ground parallel to each other and about 30cm apart. Place the other two logs either on to or next to the fire in such a way that the middle section burns, don’t let the logs burn through, wait until they are burnt through about a third of the way. By this point the logs should have a nice thick layer of glowing charcoal on them, place the logs from the fire onto the parallel logs on the ground so that the glowing charcoal is facing downwards in the gap between the two other logs. Et voila, you have a grill. Watch out, this grill can work a lot quicker than the one you have at home.

I have butter, flour, nutmeg, milk and cheese so I might well make Welsh rarebit tonight.