Tuesday 30 September 2008

Holiday in France

i had a nice holiday in the south of france this september. nine days in the Dordogne/Lot region. this area grows grapes (wine) sunflowers (seeds) and maize (animal feed. it is hilly, but not mountainous, with a healthy amount of woodland, none of it older than about 100-150 years old though.
not a lot of bushcraft was done. in fact not a lot of anything was done. we were put up by Brian's (flatmate) family. myself and brian had a 3 story villa to ourselves, while his parents live in the other house on the property. they also own another property in the area. i didn't camp out any night, because i was drinking every night (wine is cheaper than water there) and the bed i had was feather stuffed, and so so comfortable.
Mr Brown (the bear) did most of the adventuring ;)

regards bushcraft, i had a go at teaching brian the basics of making fire, and in that heat more importantly, controling fire. we kept it small, as lighting fires there in summer is illegal. i also had a bash at jobbing my own arrow together using a green hazel rod and leaves for fletching. it actually worked fine. it was pretty thick, and not totally straight, but knocked big holes in whatever it hit. that was sometimes the target. lol. the bow was only a 20lb draw bow, and we had carbon arrows. flimsy and light, but good practice.

anyway, winter is coming and i am planning assorted madness.... :)










































Sunday 21 September 2008

gort bushmeet

a belated update on the Gort bushmeet. it went ahead and went as well as i think such a thing can go. i think everyone had a good time. i am not going to do a big write-up, as it was a while ago now, and its all a bit blurry. i ended up coming home and jumping into two months solid work, so no time to even THINK of bushcraft for a while. the pictures are not great as i was using my mom's camera and wasn't used to how it works.












anyway, a big thankyou to Flor and Marian for allowing us to use their land and facilities, Aebhric from http://www.ipna.ie/ and Anthonio from http://www.wild-live.org/ for popping in to say Hi, Donal for being a man with a bushcrafty mission, getting http://www.irishbushcraftclub.org/ up and running, and to everyone else for getting involved. i hope to see you all soon.