2 nights Solo Camping - Winter in a Hot Tent

Hello again. As you can see, back out at the bell tent from the canvas tent shop. But it's set up in the woods here which was a little bit more challenging than in the field I did last week. Obviously it's a bit more uneven, there's rocks and roots and stuff under the ground, so I'm on a little bit of a skew. I've got a flat area where my bed will be so I'm all right. It is equally as muddy We've just come out the other side of Storm Brendan which is what was picking up when I last had this out. I mean it's beautiful today but it's still just boggy everywhere. So I'm going to do two nights in it. I've got the winter well stove pretty much set up now with the oven and everything as you just saw. I've done what I did last time where I've pegged down the top of the spark arrestor just to pull it back a little bit because of the oven being quite large on the flue there. Yeah, just taking a second to have a sit down. The tent itself is pretty easy to put up, you do need that mallet but everything together including the stove obviously takes a bit of time and I have to go to the truck every time in the mud to get all the bits. But yeah, nearly there. A bit of a fire pit and the bed and then I can have a proper rest. I'm actually getting a bit hungry so I might light a fire, just a small one and cook some food to keep me going. Maybe just some sausages or something like that but I've got plenty of wood. Just found some birch bark over there as well so yeah I'll just get that going first. For ease I'm just going to start it with a couple of these wood walls, my favourite fire starter. Take some of the birch bark on there. I tried a little bit of it and it wasn't great for whatever reason. I've got another new toy to play with here. It's the Bitty Big Q barbecue grill. It's pretty cool. I've actually wanted it since I saw Simon Bloke in the Woods using one. Check that out, just unfolds, unfolds again and then your legs just unfold and it all locks in and then your grill doubles in size. It's really cool. Looking forward to testing it out. I went out and bought some Christmas lights after the last camp because they were the dangly ones so this setup is going to be a little bit neater without them kind of dangling in my face and yeah, a good amount of light. Not quite as much as before but I think that was too much. This is nice especially once you get the glow of that fire going. Oh and it's powered by, you may remember the All Powers inverter solar generator that I reviewed a while ago. So because I've got to charge other things, drone and camera batteries and everything on this trip, I thought I'd bring that and I can use it for the lights as well. Like last time I'm going to use foil sheet under the top sheet because this mattress hasn't got any kind of thermal value. Like for real camping it's for like a spare bed in your house really. I couldn't not bring this again. The same table as on my last camp as well. It's a good fold out one. Goes very small. Very handy in here actually. Bringing in leaves. I've got some wood I've chopped down. Oh the owl's going. Some of these blocks as well again because they went well last time and I've got some left over and I'm just going to get it going with these. Wood wool. Chop down some kindling. Looks like we're going pretty well now so I'm just going to close up a bit. You get no smoke coming back down through this one like I used to with my Outback Frontier Stove style one. Just no smoke in here whatsoever. It all draws straight away. Love it. What I've got here is the, get the Velcro off first, the Winnowell fast fold oven. I think it's designed really to go with their folding stoves but I've got it as well as the the flue oven there. The pipe oven. So if I give it a go and you can see just folds open like so. Then you have some clips and just fasten around it. Then you've got the lid. There we go and that's set up. Got two grates to go inside it like so. And the reason I wanted this one is slightly more capacity than the small pipe oven one. If I turn it on its back you can see it's got this mesh here. Really let that heat through. So it'll be interesting to try it out. A bit more room for what I'm going to cook for dinner which I'm gonna have to get on the go because I'm doing a live stream this evening. It's Sunday evening at the moment. You may have already seen that. You may have missed it. Got some potatoes. I'm gonna parboil them in my kettle before I put them on roasting with the beef that I've got. Just a small roast, roasting joint. Probably silverside or something. So I'm just gonna use the silly knife which has no control whatsoever. Don't need all of these to be honest. Yeah. I've got some oil here that was just heating on the tray on top of the oven here and I'm just gonna stick my potatoes on that. The spuds at the top there and my beef which has got pepper and salt on the bottom there. Let that heat back up and see how it goes. It heated up pretty quickly last time. Just having a break like the mug says. I've got a mug for indoors for in the tent. I've got my normal GSI stainless steel one for out by the campfire. It's good to sit down for a minute. Dinner's all on. The beef and the potatoes are in the oven. Seems to be up to temperature and yeah just hoping that that's done by the time the live stream starts. Got another hour I think so it should be all right otherwise the live stream would be of me dishing up dinner which I don't think people are complaining about. It's minus two outside at the moment and it's 23ish in here. I mean it depends where you are. The higher you are the hotter it is. I've also got the front door half open as well because I've got to get the heat up for the oven. I don't want it to be too hot in here so it's getting that happy medium. It's very comfortable. It's nice to have a cover. I hate to do this as a one-handed thing but god that looks perfect. Just pink in the middle and some gravy and I've got nine minutes before the live stream so I better get this down mate. Good morning. I had a good sleep last night. It got pretty cold in that tent after the fire died down. I didn't bother getting up to stoke it up or anything. I just snuggled down. I had my three season sleeping bag and the quilt as well. I was fine. I even had the sheepskin over the top too. Just a little fire outside. Do some outside cooking. There's no point coming out and just spending all the time in the tent as cosy as it is. Yeah get this going and get some breakfast on. Brought a few options with me. I've got breakfast today and tomorrow so don't think about what I fancy. You've pre-guessed already. The live stream went well last night. There we go. It's not too bad. I've got a robin friend. I'll try and get him on film in a minute. He's circling camp landing on everything. No ketchup today but I have got some maple syrup to go on the pancake. I should have warmed it up a little. It's coming. It's coming. It's coming. I've got the stove on the go here and some bread flour and yeast and that I've brought with me. Just warming some water here. I'm going to put a tablespoon of butter in that to melt whilst the butter warms. Whilst the water warms. It's warm to the point that the butter's melting so that'll be soft enough. I'm not going to add it all at once. I've learnt that lesson. I'm just going to cut it in with this knife before I start kneading it. Well it's pretty much come together now. I did make it slightly wet so it took a little while to get it to this point but that's a nice dough now. It's not quite lifting everything off the bowl so I'm just going to leave that to proof by the fire here until it's doubled in size. This dough has doubled in size now so I'm just going to knock it back a little. I'm going to transfer it into here and leave it for a second proof which shouldn't take as long. So I'm just knocking back the air out of the dough and get it rise again and it'll be a more even rise without big bubbles. Still a little bit of a wet dough in all honesty but hopefully it'll be all right. So just transfer that to the loaf tin cover it over so it don't dry out and again just leave it by the fire here. Okay it's time to get this loaf in the oven ready for my lunch. We'll see how long that takes. Oven's a little cooler so I'll stoke it up and we'll see how it goes. All right moment of truth. I left it a little longer probably because the fire died down but not a bad looking loaf. Well everything's looking good. The beef from last night is nice. The bread looks good. I don't have a serrated blade to cut the bread unfortunately so it's going to have to be the silly knife as I call it. Was a bit warm to be slicing but uh it's quite all right. Slices of that beef. A few slices of tomato. Those are up. Just a little crunchy on the bottom. Well I've been carving. It's another spatula similar to this one. Need some fettling. Nothing special but it's a nice little relax for a minute. Come back in now. It's getting quite cold. Fire's dying down out the airport. Get this going because I gotta put dinner on in a bit. Get some mud off that. Gonna keep it simple tonight. Pizza and chips. Look at the fries. Pizza and brew dog. If it doesn't fill me up I do actually have another pizza. Oh that's hot. And guess what? No ketchup just because I haven't got any with me. Bon appétit. Well I'm in a bit of a rush this morning so here's my kind of pre-prepared breakfast of the egg I boiled last night and the bacon I did and the bread I baked. And I got a little hot sauce from an MRE. So that should keep me going. My robin friend's back. Just sat on the guy line there. Don't come in the tent. If I move for the camera he'll fly away but he's right at the edge of the tent.