Wet in the Woods

Over the past weeks we have had a great deal of rain, with only a couple of days of frost and sunshine. Everything is wet and this morning I woke up to rain again, but after about an hour this stopped so I decided to get out into the woods to do some work on Survival Skills. Before I go into this in depth I would like to mention something that I have seen no-one else bring up - Luck! No doubt every one of us has had the days when nothing whatever goes right, no matter how we try to overcome this; sometimes such days can be a source of problems, or sometimes we can be accident-prone. Today was such a day! 

I started off to get to the woodland along the main road, about 40 minutes walk; the pedestrian way along the main road was closed due to the never-ending roadworks that have been going on. I had to go all the way back to the village, through the village, and out onto the main road at the other end. This took an extra half an hour. I have never seen these woodlands so wet, soggy and muddy; it was hard going getting through to the old base-camp the kids and I used years ago. It was even harder trying to get a fire lit since everything was soaked, even the inner wood of a dead pine-tree that I broke up. Add to this that yesterday I sorted out my rucksack and took out everything that I thought I would not need to lighten it, and this time I needed more stuff to get the fire going. After a struggle the fire was going but the wood was so wet that it was odds on it would go out, so I took the wetter stuff off and tried to boil a pot of water on the bit that was going. Just as the water started to boil I watched in horror as it tipped over, spilling all of it, soaking the fire, and putting it out completely. In drier times I could have found natural stuff to get it started again, but not much hope here, so left it and got on with something else.

This is the area of the base-camp we made, which is still intact after all these years; the wood 'furniture' we put together has rotted except for three old fence-posts we found and used as seating. The two small pine-trees were used to throw a cord across and drape a tarp across this as a shelter; having a small mylar-backed tarp I tried this and came to another problem - the grommets were too small to fit any reasonable sized pieces of wood I could make up, fit for only tent-pegs, which, of course, I did not have with me. Had to improvise by putting a log across the back to hold it down. It did go up, of sorts, and Sam was able to rest under it whilst I messed up the tea-making. 

This was the start of the fire, but even the dead pine-needles that I found in a tree further up in an area where it seemed drier were soaked. 

This did get under way but this is about as far as it went, which was when I decided to use the fire to boil the water, and at least get a cup of tea. That was not to be either. 

As you can see the water here has started to bubble and was not far from boiling before the Great Catastrophe that put paid to the tea and put out the fire altogether. 

The day was not wasted because it gave me time to assess the situation somewhat and do something towards planning for an easier future. 

There are two alternatives for what I intend to do -

Plan A - I will tie a long log stave across between the two small pine-trees which will mean that a tarp can be thrown over this to form an instant shelter. To make this even more comfortable I thought about using the technique for making a fire-reflector and building a wood-wall at the back, around six logs high maybe. This would mean that the tarp can be higher than it was before and give more room inside. Then the sides could be closed off with upright logs hammered into the ground covering them behind the two trees. This makes a closed-up ready-to-go shelter which needs only the tarp to complete. I would probably finish this by putting three or four small-diameter pieces between the top-rail and the back wall, thus making the tarp tauter and more secure. 

Plan B - I could move to another area of the woodland and start again; this may be the option I have to take since a lot of the stuff here is now rotten, and there are areas of the woodland where more recent felling has been done leaving ready-made logs for 'furniture'. There are also areas with large conifer trees that would no doubt be drier. 

Either way these options would need more tools, which must include an axe (which I did not have with me). And if possible a larger saw to cut some larger logs much more easily. This is for another day, and hopefully one with a bit more luck.