In the woods right now!

What a lovely day.

Radio Stars!

Hi,

A few month sa go we had the pleasure of getting a radio presenter out for the day to do one of our courses. She had a blast and here are a few pictures.

A coastal forage

Limpets are delicious with wild garlic

Crystal clear pools on the chalk and limstone

I love this picture the colours are fantastic.

A spot of flint knapping

Scurvy Grass

Mayweed

Sea Kale, a protected species but beautiful to look at

Fallkniven S1 Forest Knife

Hi all,
I have been lucky enough to have got a hold of one of these tools.
I have been using it over the past few days. It is designed as a wilderness knife and as a hunters knife but I wanted to give it some light wood work to do.
The knife blade is about 5 inches long. The handle is hard textured rubber and very comfortable.
For batoning it is fantastic, and basically blows the wood apart! I think the fact that the blade is 5mm wide helps with this.
I carved a few feathersticks which it was good for. However I think feathersticks are more to do with skill than the knife if it is sharp.
I also made a quick spoon which was easy enough too!
Next I carved a set for hand drill.
I will be processing a deer soon which is presently frozen and I plan to use the knife for that too.
I will keep updating as I use it.
Cheers

Not looking good

I often get annoyed when people get all worked up about things like grey squirrels. Fair enough they are a pest and harm our native reds but I wonder what has caused more harm. Humans destroying the majority of wild habitat in Britain over the years or humans introducing a new species.

I was monitoring the removal of an perfectly good mature Beech tree the other day. The tree was being removed because it was blocking light from reaching a conservatory during certain hours of the day. I had fought to have the tree reduced which would have solved the situation but then the health and safety demon was raised and kids playing in the garden getting hit by a piece of deadwood and that was that.

In the end a tree of 150 years was removed to get 2 hours of light during the day when most people are at work.

There was a climbing frame under the tree which looked like it had not been used in years probably since the games console came into the house.

It is not looking good for us as a race when the majority are more worried about light in our conservatory than something which provides oxygen for our planet.

People are more connected to the tv, games console or car than the forests and oceans.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Ancient commoner of the wood

I came across this old Silver Birch recently. It has a main stem diameter of 1.3m and a crown spread of 18m and is in perfect health for an OAP.

Lovely big old boy.

I am a sucker for a nice tree me.

The tree must be well over 100 years old

Shoes

I discovered this the other day. Kids are wonderfull!