SOLO WILD HAMMOCK CAMP - 2 NIGHTS

I think it's going to be a windy one people. Conkers. See how we call them conkers but the proper name is horse chestnut. Just in case anyone was wondering. Yeah. Horse chestnuts inside. Yeah. I assume they look like crab apples. I've no idea what the proper name is. Crab apples. Random. Miniature apples. One of those mad summer showers coming on. That is awesome. There's actually two. Can you see the second one there? Two side by side. That is totally epic. Awesome. As we're pushing through again. You notice drastically this week a change in the vegetation. In parts. As you can see it's all starting to decompose and die. So as I'm walking along the river I'm also starting to notice that little dry riverbeds that obviously were dry are starting to run again. And also little islands that were close to the riverbank have started to submerge. So I say another month and a bit or even sooner all my flood camps will be unsafe to use. The rain's coming in. Stronger bursts now. It's a nice sheltered area though. Stopped for a breather. Took my bag and my food bag off. See my sleeping bag's getting wet but I'm not bothered about that now because I've sorted that. I'll show you that when we unpack later. Yeah it's getting pretty wild out there. Took shelter in this quite thick canopied woodland for five. Another breather. Ooh. Just watch where the hell I'm going. So I'm all gortexed up now just because I've got a rough area to go through and still two fields of openness and with the random rain the way it is I'd rather be protected. Some more mud about. Some nice colours have fallen up. So I've stopped in here just for a coffee break. I might stay here tonight, I don't know yet. I'm still debating it. Nice little bench there. The wind catches this area quite bad but I can put my hammock a long ways up there. Nice Cumbrian weather. I'm brewing up. It's getting wet now. What the hell. It'll die off in a second. Well, I'm going to camp here tonight. I'm back at my fire pit there. The dry pond sort of thing. So yeah, I'm going to pitch up here and get a dry area on the go because I am soaked. I've just found a fallen dead tree. Massive. There's like multiple limbs. It's quite close to camp too. Everything's just dead. Well, everything's not dead but a lot of the trees are damaged because of wind or land slidage. That one's half dead there. See all the center branches are, there's loads down there too that are overhanging. Definitely build a camp around here, look. Look, materials. That's going to be my hammock set up for tonight. It's fairly close to the fire pit. Tarp's soaking wet now so it shouldn't burn too much. It's all good. Do that roaring fire in seconds. That's my emergency pack of 95P Tesco's own fire lighters. Does the trick for instant camp fire. Whether your wood's wet or dry, it's just nice to have a little pack in your bag. I've used mine today. Not for any other reason apart from my just easy fire. My sleeping bag is now inside there and then inside a proper dry sack. Oh yeah, that's going to be dry. Epic. It's pretty dark now. I'm going to get some tea on. Quite nippy away from the fire. Got some spaghetti carbonara on the go. And my gammon steak. Cooking that bad boy nice and slowly. There we go, my spaghetti carbonara and my gammon steak. Going to eat and chill. Oh yeah. Dessert. Pyramid of profiteroles. I've really enjoyed getting to this new spot. It was nice to stop at the riverbank camp to see that it's not flooded yet. The carbonara was to die for. We'll catch on in the morning. I'm all tucked up. New winter hat as you see. It's nice and soft inside. We'll catch you in the morning. Good morning. My fire's completely old. The rain finally stopped too. I've just checked the weather and it's going to start again later. It's going to be another wet day. I think I'm going to get up and get my fire lit. I've just lit this bit of firewood I've got. What this area here is going to offer some awesome protection in the winter I think. Just having a good look around at the wood sources and all that. There is a few trees that we wouldn't call really safe but I can't touch them. Not standing living because it's not just like cutting a tree down. As soon as I cut that tree down that's criminal damage. So yeah. You don't want to do that. So no living trees. Only I can take dead standing. I can take ones on the sides because they're just clusters of debris. Through here this is actually a dry stream bed I'm walking in. Through here there's dry dead, that's dead. And through here the trees I spotted last night. I've been back and checked and they are completely dead. Nice chunks on the bottom, there's like eight. I've got like ten, fifteen. Fifteen out of that. Like log wise. And there's one next to it pointing the same way, like clustered all the top. Can't see because of the green stuff. Here it's dead. And also here some decent logs in there for like a fire reflector and even one wall or something. But I don't like the angle it's hanging at to cut that with the chainsaw just because I can get springbacks. So I'd have to clear the top first and take it off in chunks and let it drop. But that's maybe for another day. When this stream dries up again it's going to flow all the way down there. Past the brownstone and into the little pool here that formed last year. My camp's hopefully going to be on the edge of it. If not I can also already dig this earth away and make it more of an angle so that the water stays in there. And that's the drainage point there. So yeah, don't cut living trees because it's criminal damage at the end of the day. Just clean up around them because there's always loads of dead stuff around. The smell of this bacon is awesome. It rains pretty much on now. Just light hitting the canopy for now but it'll come through before long. Oh what's this? Bacon muffins. There we have it. I've got my porridge and my bacon muffins. I'm just going to sit out the rain and eat this. It really is a miserable day. I think I'm going to stay here for the day and again tonight just because the rain's kind of pinning us down. I can't be hassled putting away a wet tarp so I might just plod around here. Need some more firewood. Eleven o'clock. Coffee on and chocolate eclairs. I've already had two. Couldn't help myself. It's still raining. I'm going to have a nice sirloin steak for lunch with some macaroni cheese. Just hide it on now. I don't want to clean around my kit and I've been doing some modifications to my underquilt which has made it hang a lot better which I'm happy with. It's been playing around pretty much all morning. It's all good. Just as I'm almost finished cooking my lunch the heavens have opened again. I might enjoy this after I've got some more firewood. Triple chocolate trifle. Oh yes. Oh my god. I'll text them to dry it out. Won't take long. Collecting some firewood. Some nice thick stuff there. Loving it. Nice and quiet up here. Nice logs on my fire now. I've enjoyed my relaxing day. Just chilled out. Even had a nap. Getting dark soon. Just been stocking up my fire on a tree. Still got a stump attached to it so I'm just going to burn it in the middle and then push it in. Still raining lightly. Well guys, I'm going to hit the sack and I'll catch you all in the morning. Morning everyone. Slept like a baby. Quite nippy this morning. So got up and got the fire going first thing. As you can see. Fire's a rager this morning. Pretty much all packed up now. Just the last few things and my coffee to finish. And my fire to make tracks. Still quite dark. There's the sun starting to come up. I'm in the fields right now walking. Some epic morning views. It's in a day but I was too slow to get my camera out. Still quite windy. At least the rain's stopped. Awesome. Turning around. And that's pretty much me for this week. We'll catch you all again.