Having had this week off to myself and decided to try out a site for a night. I went to Church Farm, Ardeley near Stevenage in Hertfordshire which is a working farm which also offers a range of camping opportunities.
Interestingly I also found links to a prepper and a bushcraft weekend in the wood whilst researching the site. To book it you need to visit the camping in the fields (this brings the stay over camping page up), you'll also need to add in the open outside fire, wood, kindling and matches package if you wish to have an open fire. They also insist on any fresh meat being purchased from the farm shop for hygiene reasons regarding their livestock.
And this is a copy of my invoice for one the night stay, you also get an email confirmation sent out too.
My sat nav took me into an adjecent road but I would suggest using it and look out for the Jolly Waggoners pub (which they own) and the turning is opposite. If you do choose to camp the shop, butchers and café is back behind my left shoulder in the above left hand picture.
For all camping areas on the site you go straight to the end and turn left (again referring to the above left hand picture), it looks like you are going into a farm yard but bear with. Once you have turned left you then turn right towards the silo in the above right hand picture and the track goes downhill.
All the camping areas are accessed from this track. For Squitmore Wood the track then rises and you meet a split which is Sunken Lane to the left or across Great Field to the right, either works. You then enter the Squitmore End campsite via the gate.
When I got to the field I thought I was heading into this wood at the end of the field and parked up near it. When I found boundary notices saying do not enter I spied an open gate...
...Which it transpired was Squitmore Wood. I've re-checked the website and it mentions Beards and Lowany End Wood for hammocking (with the latter by special permission) but all three were planted just before or after the millennium so the trees haven't got massive girths, the biggest being about the diameter of a side plate. The ones in this wood (mainly Oak, Ash and Field Maple) are also planted in sequence so you'll just about squeeze in a 3m x 3m tarp but mine was a longer DD Tarp M and I did it by going diagonally.
There are the standard low impact loos which are backfilled with sawdust, showers and sinks further down the camping field. From this wood the shop site is ten minutes distance at a brisk pace.
You'll find several fire scars about the place but equally open fires are permitted (you buy a permit and the necessary wood etc as mentioned). They didn't have any kindling when I booked in so I suggested that I take a few extra pieces of firewood and blitzed it with my tomahawk.
You also get these little fire lighters which looked like mummified truffles which I was going to light with this impromptu fire kit I'd put together. I dug the turf out and used a sulphur match, a piece of dried crampball fungus their firelighter to get proceedings underway.
As I was later onsite than I'd planned I put the tarp up in case it rained again and then got on with dinner. I'd decided to do some ponassed fish (mackerel instead of the more usual trout) and was going to try and enclose it in a cardboard box to smoke it as well but I let that plan slip to try and make up some time.
I flavoured the mackerel via my spice holder and got on with having some pan-fried tomatoes and rice as an accompaniment with it.
Once I'd eaten I got the remainder of my set up completed and did a bit of camp admin. With prep time needed for tea as well I decided not to start and projects but to have a look around the rolling countryside.
There were still a lot of flowers out with Chicory and Hops being quite common. The thing that struck me was how many blackberries there were to the point where some hung down in tresses. Often you can find a duff one or two as you graze but each one here was a really tasty mouthful.
Upon returning I started a sort of cawl like stew/ soup using a Petromax FT1 Dutch oven that I got for re-subscribing to Bushcraft and Survival Skills a while back. The deep lid allowed me to sweat the veg whilst I browned the chicken thighs.
It was simple to put together and quite filling and was just the job after my extended countryside bimble.
I'd made a little more than I could scoff so I stuck the Dutch oven with the leftovers in my new reflector oven to keep warm. I was so full that the planned dessert would wait until tomorrow, for breakfast!
As the light dropped I watched a swirling mist moving over a nearby field. I was going to head over to near an area were I'd seen a massive Badger latrine with twelve individual scrapings but as I headed out a 4 x 4 came up the lane and shot my night vision. Plan B, I positioned the trail cam at the top of Sunken Lane which had six different routes meeting up in a truncated fashion.
I slept like a log and got up promptly then got the fire re-started, with a cooked breakfast and pudding to do.
Once the fire had some viable embers I got mixing the pudding first. It is loosely based on a clootie and is usually cooked in a bain marie.
I was experimenting with it to see how it fared in the reflector oven.
It was then on with the cooked breakfast which is a doddle with this Primus non-stick pan. I can thoroughly recommend the farm's sausages too.
And to the clootie (version of). The cooking time for them is usually about 30 minutes but I decided on 40 to be sure. I had a bit of log quake midway through which tipped the tray to a diagonal. I rescued it but put it in front to back instead of side to side which left a tiny bit of liquid mix in one corner, this might not have even happened if I set the bars on the higher setting. Served with rum sauce.
In the future I'll position a couple of tent pegs in front of the reflector oven for a bit of insurance.
After a tidy away of breakfast stuff I needed to get the trail cam so I decided a quick round the houses walk was in order to burn off some calories whilst getting it. I found all these prints in the lane with Pheasant, badger and Fox...Not sure about the top left hand side one though...
My route took me near to the farm shop so I indulged a takeaway café latte. On the way I noticed a column of crows circling like Buzzards do and then noticed an actual Buzzard at the base of it. There are thirty five crows in the picture mobbing it with pretty much the same number above. Poor old Buzzard.
Coming back up the Lane induced a head in hands moment. I not only spotted the Badger sett but got up on the bank to see that they used it as a route! I could have set the trail cam up there and watched them high up on the other bank.
I think I was reading the farm literature at about this spot when I scouted the site on foot, and then the second time I was driving. I was clinging to the trail cam offering me something but whilst I'd sited it on the lane it was much further up.
I'd slowly been striking camp in between doing bits so I was well positioned and therefore decided to get some wood work done. The net needle was from a piece of wood that spawned this spalted kuksa, the Cedar wood spatula (an off cut from this fence post bowdrill session) was roughed out at home and given some extra work and the spoon is a really early one that I never finished and left out in my garden.
All the pieces need a little more work but it was good to get the time to spend on them in a dappled glade.
Not surprisingly I had a late dinner which was a vacuum packed chicken stew with noodles. after this I packed everything away except the camera and my last project which was to be roasted nuts.
I used seasonally available Cobnuts and didn't bother with the Turkish hazelnuts this time round. So as before the nuts are the filling in between two layers of sand (putting the sand in sandwich) with a layer of embers on top, the only difference is the base layer of sand is on hot ground in the fire pit.. I'm actually using briquttes which are easy to smash up when the fire is done with.
Going on previous timings I went for around fifteen minutes and left a small amount in for the twenty minute mark.
I think fifteen minutes is the magic number, a quick and persuasive tap with my trenching spade on a stone and they issued a little whiff of steam and had a texture and taste similar to that of a Chestnut. The ones baked to the twenty minute mark were a little dry for me.
With the nut session over all I had to do was chuck my small midden mound in, soak the area and replace the turf I'd dug out.
I could have left a fire scar but it wouldn't have felt right and I was generally happy with my leave no trace effort. Assuming the other 'millennial' woods I mentioned are the same as the one I stayed in they obviously don't have the mature wood feel of somewhere like Badgells Wood and Lee Valley the site still has a lot going for it and I enjoyed my stay but I'm still gutted I missed the potential Badger show, hidden in plain sight! It's also one of the few times I've camped and not had a bannock or similar which I usually love to make.
The good news is that I did catch a badger on the trail cam, but it was a brief shot of it on the left hand side of the screen as it left Great Field and then shot down the Lane. I did however get some Rabbit, Fox and Deer footage, a bit of the latter two are uploaded above. The 'lightning bolt' in the images is a close up branch that I didn't spot.
