slagg

Today decided to take my 4 children into the woods to see how the pack would cope. We set off on a casual steady pace towards the woods just off tarn hows. I was intending on finding the old scout hut that's up there but after about an hour of walking a small track decided to set up base in the woods. The woods here are very dense and you feel very isolated and comfortable knowing that your not in sight of anyone. I did ok on the walk with the pack only struggling when my 3 old insisted on a carry! Once we found a clearish area on the floor I got the bcb crusader canteen out and got some water on the boil. It was very cold today and patches if snow/ice were still on the ground. It took 2 packs of the green gel to get the water to boil. Whilst I was doing this the older 3 had gone a bit further into the woods and were atempting to build a teepee type shelter. Rudi my youngest stayed with me as he was ready for his hot chocolate. I used my sealed bag of spare clothes for rudi to sit on. I also put the candle lantern up, althogh it wasn't dark it gave the kids a good idea where we were. After I had sorted rudi out with a hot choc I got to snackpots ready for the others.I was pleased to find that I had enough water to do this off just one cup as I wasn't wanting to sit around again waitng for another cup to boil. Once everyone had a quick fill up they got back to building thier shelter, I decided to give my cold steel bushman a quick field test and went about cutting a few branches, it did well but to me felt a little light. I then found a straightish piece of wood cleaned the ruts off and slotted the bushman onto on end, it felt snug so i lined up a tree about 15 - 20 feet away and let rip. The spear flew straight and the knife dug in pretty deep to the tree, unfortunately the stick snapped and left a stump of wood in the handle which was pain. Anyway we speant about 5 hours in total messing around in the wood and always felt that we had everything we needed. I wouldn't have liked tospend the night although the shelter the kids had built would have been more than adequote the lack of sleeping bags would have meant a very chilly night.

Just thought I'd do a quick write up before we set off back to the car. The joys if portable Internet on the iPhone!

Sound like you had a great day.

Be good to spend a night out there.

The little man waiting for his hot chocolate



Another pic - u can tell it was cold by his hands!!!