Camping in Dark Forest with Woodstove & Hot Tent

Welcome to TA Outdoors. Today I'm going to be camping in a small hot tent with a wood stove. I have around about half a mile to walk to get to the spot that I want to camp at, which I think is next to a very dark and dense forest. I think it'll be a great backdrop for the tent. I need to get everything set up and the wood stove going and cook up some great food before temperatures drop down to about zero degrees. I've got my gear on my backpack, I've got the tent down here, so let's go and hike to the camp spot. So I've just found this really pretty open glade here amongst these, I think they're balsam fir trees, but there's also a big silver birch, giant silver birch there, and a scots pine just here. But the lighting in this area just looks really, really pretty. Leaves are down, I think it's nice and flat, so it'd be an ideal place to put the tent. And I've got a view of the forest that way, and I'm sheltered and protected by a very thick, dense bit of forest this way. So now I need to set up the tent. Temperatures are starting to drop due to get to sub-zero at about midnight, so we're hovering around five degrees celsius at the moment. So let's get the tent set up. Well that's it, tent is set up. I've had this tent a couple of weeks, this is my first outing with it. I've just been waiting for the temperatures to drop enough because it's a stove tent, I've just been waiting for the temperatures to get low enough to be able to use the wood stove. So I believe the stove goes in this section here, which is its own like vestibule, but I love the fact that it's got the awning that comes up like that, and I've got a direct view of the forest in front of me. This is the perfect setting for it. So I'm going to get my stove set up, we have an hour and a half of daylight left, and I want to get my stove totally set up, get organized, and then I can relax and enjoy the trip. Nobody likes doing this bit, I prefer to do a little X. So I only bought my smallest stove today because I was hiking in, didn't really have the car nearby. So I've got this little jubilee clip here, that's as far down as the stove pipe goes, and you can pull it up and down quite easily. So I've got this jubilee clip, just slide right down there, and then I tighten just so I know it's extra secure. I've got this little phillips head on my key ring. So I normally know when it's tight enough because I can lift it and it lifts the whole stove up. Now before I do anything, I've just got to make sure everything's out the way because once this is hot, I don't want to be touching it at all. I've got to check it's not touching any of the tent material, that's stable, check the door can open easy. So I'm going to put a pot on here and cook, so I don't want it to be wobbly. Stupidly, I forgot to put the spark arrester on the top before I put the stove in. Hopefully I can reach. What I might do is just leave the stove. Did it. I'm pleased with that. What a very cool setup. I've angled the stove so that it faces more in the tent, so that when I'm cooking and things and putting wood at night when it's really cold, I can just shut down this door here and feed the stove still from the tent rather than have it facing this way. As you can see from the tent to the woods, there is plenty of firewood. Rather than cut lots of individual small pieces of firewood to then carry back over to the stove, it's much easier to just cut big sections of whatever logs you're using, carry the big long sections over to your camp area and then process all the wood over there. I've personally just found it so much easier than sawing and doing lots of little saw cuts here, carrying over lots of wood, coming back. Just get the big stuff first. I just did a test cut here and it looks good to me. So this piece can come with us. So now that I have the big branches all the way near the camp, I can just work on cutting these up to size and just do it all here and even I don't have to cut it all up, I can save some for later. If I need to warm up and it's getting chilly, I can come out and just saw away to my heart's content. I just find it, especially when I'm fighting light in the winter, it's so much easier to go and collect the wood first, bring it over here to the camp and then process it all down. So the only downside about me having the small folding titanium stove is that it's really small. It's great, it's portable, it's light, but I'm limited to the size of wood that I can use. That's about the maximum length I can use on that little stove, which means I kind of have to make twice as many saw cuts. Yes, they're only small pieces of log, but it doesn't mean I'm going to have to feed this fire a lot more than I would with the bigger stoves. But the benefit is it's so light and it's so small. It's like a little bit bigger than an iPad. It's great. I really love it. I use it a lot and it's handy for when trips like this where I have to hike out a little bit longer than I normally would and I don't have a vehicle nearby. That stove is brilliant. 45 minutes till dark and it seems like a good time to split the wood up and get the stove on. No rain as of yet, which is good. Nothing worse than five degrees Celsius in the UK and rain. It's freezing. A little tip when trying to split wood like this out here in the woods when you haven't got a chopping block and it's only a tiny little hatchet. The ground's really spongy so you need to create something hard. I like to just put some logs down like that and sometimes a log on top just so it can all absorb the shock a little bit more. Just need a few bits to be exposed. I'm going to just lay down some of this wood on the bottom, split side up and I've got some twigs. I'm just going to use a firelighter because it's going to be dark in a minute. I don't want to really mess around. I've got some split wood here. I'm going to leave the door open a little bit. The stove is puffing away nicely. The fire's lit. I've stacked all the firewood in next to the stove to dry it out because everything's soaked at the moment. I quite like the layout of this tent. The way the stove's in a separate compartment to the tent itself. I've got quite a few hot tents and it feels a bit safer. I know that sounds strange but you're still having a stove in a tent but it just feels a bit safer having it in a separate vestibule and I like that you can open it right up anyway. Right, I'll be getting the gear in soon in the tent because nightfall is coming in about maybe half an hour and I want to get my bed stuff set up as well because I don't like doing it all in the dark. It's just a bit of a rush and then I can actually start cooking. We're going to be doing another casserole this week but it's going to be a slightly different one. Last week's video was a much quicker basic shelter setup and food. This week I've got more time to relax so I'm going to be getting that set up and getting the food in the tummy as they say. Right, so we're doing a casserole and this week it's going to be a sausage casserole. So I'm just going to cook the sausages a bit. Last time I cooked, what did I cook in last week? Crockpot thing, enamel, so it was easy it didn't burn whereas this stuff could burn. There is a coating on the inside of this pan though but we'll cook these first, get it nice and hot then we're adding the veg. Let's get onions in. Oh god, missed most of them. Then potatoes, and carrots. Fill it up with water, let it boil. We'll give that an hour but we'll check on it every 20 minutes. Been about half an hour, bubbling nicely. Well, in the tent and I've shut up the main flat, the viewing awning and I've just got this door open here where you guys are but it's toasty. It's very warm in this vestibule bit. I tell you what, the tent is like a TARDIS. It is so much bigger than it looks back there. Ample room for two people and even more room for solo and a dog or your backpack. I'm quite impressed. We are an hour down into the sausage casserole so it's coming up to 6pm. It's smelling good. I'm about to put in the actual sauce. There's so much room in here. I can see me using this tent quite a lot this winter. Right, time for the casserole mix. I go for this Coleman's one. I used the beef one last week and it's lovely. Chuck that in there, give it a stir. It'll all break up as it bubbles in a minute but that smells amazing. Right, now we'll give that another 40 minutes to an hour. Get it really soft. Right, I think we're done there. Let that cool down for two hours. I've bought multiple layers for today because I know temperatures is going to drop down to, they say, they say zero. This smells incredible. There is my two hour cooked sausage casserole with a nice thick sauce and I did bring, somewhere, white baton. I'm going to only have half of this because I want to have half for what I've got planned for breakfast. That is amazing. That's two back-to-back casseroles that I've done. They've been really good. It's a monk jack or deer. Really close. It's probably one of the closest I've heard. There's another one. I'd say it's a monk jack because it's quite high pitched. I reckon they've smelt the smoke from the wood stove as well. It's a bit of an alert. At one point it just sounded like a dog barking, like it went mental. I've shut down that part, the final part of the tent now, so it's sealed. There is an air vent down here which I might open in a bit but it's coming up to 13 degrees now. No carbon monoxide which is good but I now need to take this layer off again because it's actually getting too warm. Right, I think it's cool enough to eat. The deer is still going crazy. That is the best bit of the casserole, obviously. That's lovely. It just falls apart. The carrot's really good too. Oh yeah, I almost forgot my mini red wine. Come on deer, give us a break. Cheers everyone. Oh that's a nice one actually, Malbec. Interestingly, I just had the alarm go off. Look, CPPM or whatever it is, is five just in a number. It went straight to red and went to 90 and it's because I had the stove door open and the smoke, I didn't realise the smoke was coming in. I've just opened up that and I can see it. You probably can't see it in the air. I've had to take some layers off but that's really interesting. It's good to know the alarm goes off. Interestingly, there is a number now. I've never had this before. It's flashing green. Is it the green? Yeah, the green's flashing so it's safe but it is seven and it's never read a number before. That's the first time I had it up here so I was going to get the temperature and the smoke came out the stove as I was kind of blowing it a bit to get it going again and it is smoky in here but that's really interesting. The alarm went off so fast from when the stove was open. It made me jump actually but it's just really good to know that it works and the alarm does go off and that is why I will always have a carbon monoxide alarm if I'm doing something with a wood stove in a tent. Anyway, I was going to put this log in. It's on seven there. It just went up as the smoke came out so it's super sensitive. Now it's back to zero. Cool. At least I can whack open the vents on this tent really quickly and get some airflow. That wasn't the tent's fault by the way. That was just me farting around blowing the stove for too long. 26 degrees up there so pretty much where my head is is 26 degrees. It's a bit too hot if I'm I don't think I'm going to burn the stove for too much longer because it really is so toasty in here because once I go to get my sleeping bag it's going to be so uncomfortable. I've done it so many times before. Go to get your sleeping bag and it's roasting when you've got a stove on and you have to wait like hours for the stove to go out so we'll probably let it go out soon. Coming up nine o'clock. I think that is going to be near enough bedtime for me folks. Just get the camp set up, sleep set up. Right folks, quarter past nine. I'm going to call it a night. Very tired. A bit of a rush setting all the tent up and everything trying to beat the darkness but my belly is full. Very content and content in the tent. We'll see how the night goes and whether it gets down to sub-zero. It is forecasted to but I don't think it will in this particular area of the woods. It's so dense with the trees. I am tired. Either way I will let you know if anything happens but for now I'll see you guys in the morning. Good morning everyone. It's a slightly different day to yesterday. The temperature is at least two or three degrees warmer and it's raining which was in the forecast but not as much as this so at least I'm in the tent. I had an all right night to be fair. I woke up maybe three times I'd say so I was pretty comfortable but the rain was what woke me up. So I'm going to cook some food from inside the tent and then pack up and have to dry out all the gear at home again. I always for mornings like this where I know it's going to be a bit of a slog packing the gear away, I'll always have a gas stove. It's just so much easier. I've not got enough firewood to start getting all the stove going this morning. All the time to be honest. We are just going to cook up a couple of sausages packing up the gear while the sausages have been cooking. I forgot my ketchup. It's been a bit of a nightmare morning. I was so prepared yesterday, not so prepared this morning but sausage sarnie will soon sort that out. I'm not looking forward to this pack away. spot that I found here. This little glade is just beautiful. I reckon it'd be really good if it snows at some point. I think it'd be a great place to camp. It's got a nice backdrop, the dark forest behind it and it is, it's really quite dark in there and then it's got the open view of the woodland in front. It's been a really nice camp. It's a shame about the rain this morning but it's England, what do we expect? It's always going to be a bit of rain. I was hoping it'd be totally sub-zero but looks like I'm gonna have to wait a few more weeks now for that but very pleased with the tent and the stove. The setup was really good. There was a bit of condensation inside which is expected with tents like that but I've got to get geared up now for I think it's just over half a mile walk back to the car. So thank you for watching guys. I really appreciate it. If you enjoyed it feel free to subscribe and there's more episodes just like this in the description below. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one.