Shelter placement and wind direction.

It's almost one of those instinctive things, build your shelter with its back to the prevailing winds, it offers you protection right? Yes but it can also cause problems



Looks good on an elevated rise to avoid a cold sink, back to the wind and room in front but..
The wind races over the slanted roof causing an acceleration of air draft resulting in a drawing effect towards the shelter..



And once you light your fire the draw will suck any smoke directly into your shelter.
I made this a very smokey fire intentionally to show just how the draw works in a strong wind and you can clearly see how the smoke bends into the shelter just like an eddy in a creek or stream.
When building a shelter with strong prevailing winds build it so that the wind is parallel to your shelter and draws the fire to the side, it could save you a lot of heartache if you've spent a long time building.

Great summer Fungi Find

When out leading a foraging walk recently I came across some lovely edible summer tree fungi



Chicken of the woods, growing on an oak. A little past it's best but we did take a little and cooked it up and it was outstanding





And dryads saddle also called pheasants wing or pheasants back, this fungi was in profusion but we only took a little to try, again all thought it was quite delicious.

Lost its Mum

While out on another short expedition we were sitting round the fire late one evening when we heard a chirping sound, it sounded like a bird but there were some who recognised it straight away, a fallow deer fawn had wandered into camp and was looking for its mum



It was quickly and quietly moved to the outside of camp where it's mum could find it safely. All ended well as we saw the two of them together as dawn broke the following morning.

.50 cal shell Ferro rod.

Managed to get my hands on a few .50 cal shell casings so I thought I'd put a get to rod in one and see how it turned out.



This was the 125mm x 12.5mm ferro rod which was a perfect fit with some epoxy resin. Stuffed inside the casing so the rod didn't slip the whole way in and I also added a lanyard.
It's a big beast as you can see next to the Mora kansbol.

Top ten UK bushcraft blog awards.

Feedspot had whittled down all the bushcraft blogs in the UK to the top ten, and guess what, we made it in there..

A very many thanks to Feedspot and the founders for this award.

https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_bushcraft_blogs/

Telling the difference between a cockle and a clam

I went for a coastal bimble last week after a storm to see what Poseidon have coughed up onto the shore, always an interesting adventure.



A huge mid part of a nipper from a brown crab, this fella must have weighed 2 pounds easily..



A leg from a spider crab. These were not originally that common around our shores but seem to be more readily found these days.



Lots and lots of razor clam shells



And lastly quite a few clam and cockle shells, and the easy way to tell them apart... the radial lines on a cockle are vertical and those on a clam are horizontal..its as easy as that.

Both taste really good in a clam chowder !!

Rainbows end.

It's the first time we've been able to wet a line this year but it was thoroughly enjoyable when the chance happened by.

I'm not much of a fly fisher but am an absolutely obsessed lure angler believing that it's much more difficult to catch a fish on something that looks nothing like a natural prey item than something that does!

So off we went to a local fishery and I tried every bait and lure I had from powerbait to rapalas and nothing was working. However you may remember me making some inline spinners in a post a while back so I chose one of these as a last resort..3 casts had 3 fish..

And another few casts and I had my 5 fish limit. All on a homemade spinner..the best fish was 3 1/2 pounds and the smallest 2 pounds..though Davy had the biggest fish of the day at about 5 pounds on the fly.

We smoked one on the day for lunch

And a tasty treat it was, here's hoping for many more days like that one.