Building bigger fires and environmental impact studies.

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Awoke to bright sunshine this morning. It was a bit of a shock! By the time I'd finished my beautiful breakfast and arrived at the scout camp, the clouds had come over again. Today we learnt more about tools, fire and tent building. The theory part of today was an environmental impact study on the area where Forest Schools are run, woodland in the UK and bush at home in Australia.

The tool we learnt about today was the billhook. It's a short bladed cutting tool for splitting smaller logs. It requires two people to operate. I'm not even sure if they are available in Australia as this is the first time I've actually seen one. It worked really well on the English softwood like oak but I'm not sure how successful it would be on Australian hardwood. It was also a really slow way to split wood! We managed to split three small logs into quarters and put them away safely for some secret activity tomorrow!

We learnt how to tie another knot and put up our tent tarp using poles to lift the sides to give more shelter. this was a bit tricky and not so stable. The ground is also really soft and the home made tent pegs were moving around. It would have been better with longer pegs. By now the clouds had moved away and given way to a beautiful sunny, warm afternoon. We even had to take off our coats. It was really lovely to be in the outdoors with sunshine and finally some little voles. We watched some run in and out of the bushes. The two we saw were different colours. One was grey and the other was a red-brown. Too fast to get a photo!

I went for a wander into the woodland at lunchtime to see if I could spot a vole. This is a little mouse-like creature that lives in the leaf litter in little burrows. I didn't see any but did catch a glimpse of some cheeky grey squirrels chasing each other up and around a tree trunk. I also saw my first bluebell that was still in bud but coming up. I did find some turkey tail mushrooms and took them back to the hut. I broke them up and put them in hot water to steep. Apparently, they need to be boiled for an hour but I tried it just with the hot water. The taste wasn't too bad. Earthy and smelled like mushrooms (duh!).

We are going to do some cooking tomorrow over the fire and so after classes finished I went in Hailsham bought some flour to make damper and a subway veggie roll for dinner. Found my way back home and enjoyed my dinner watching TV. The end of a very good day of learning. Getting quite tired!

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Photos

Tree Talk
The tree we learnt about today was the hazel tree. This is the tree that grows hazelnuts. It is remarkably strong and Paul showed us how to make rope with the stem.

Our group's fire
It was really tricky to get the fire going as the sticks and tinder were quite damp.