Church Farm, Ardeley Camp #2

Having camped solo at Church Farm for the first time last year I was rather surprised to find that my youngest son wanted to tag along for my second visit recently.

As before I booked the site and a bag of fire wood with kindling, matches and starters but instead of Squitmore Wood where I had my visit I asked on my booking form to pitch up in Lowany End Wood which is still a young wood but is older than the other one I was in.

Once I'd booked in I headed off to find the wood. The start of the route is similar to the one detailed in my previous blog but for Lowany End Wood we turned left by the cow shed...

 

...And across a large field to the wood which is accessed through a central gate. Note that as I type this the wood doesn't have a name on said gate. I meant to pack some atlatl darts in case there was room and forgot, I could have chucked them in this field leading to the woods to my heart's desire.

 

The wood has a central access for vehicles and conveniently has several areas clear to park vehicles in so you are well away from things but equally you can unload your gear quickly, efficiently and get going in quick order. There are also two water taps along the access but they are slow thinkers which I guess is the price you pay for being away from things and certainly not a deal breaker. 

There was a noticeable Southwesterly blowing so we elected to set up on the left hand side to maximise the shelter offered by both the right hand side and a decent Hawthorn hedge  along the bit we'd chosen.

I'd offered my son a choice of two one pole lightweight tents, a regular or closed tarp tent  or a regular tent and he chose the latter. Well if he thought I was going to do it he was mistaken! There was plenty of animated chat going on with this inanimate object with my favourite being 'You are just a tent, you will do my bidding!' as I set about sorting the rest of our camp.

 

As with my first camp I decided to remove the top of my chosen fire site, even though there is no onus on me to do so. It was rather problematic this time as the top soil was dry and rather crumbly but eventually I got a win.

The firewood supply consisted of a large piece firewood bag, a fairly small amount of kindling, some eco firelighters and two packs of matches. 

 

 Whilst the top soil was dry, the stuff below was damper and therefore I used some kindling as a platform the ground was damp I did a base and effectively used nearly all the supplied kindling in one go. I left my son lighting it the kindling  blitzed a couple of pieces of the supplied firewood with my trusty Justin Burke tomahawk to make some more kindling for the next morning and to produce a few smaller sized firewood pieces to get us going.

 

For my lodgings I'd gone for my usual tarp and hammock set up and used my 3 m x 3 m one as an admin area which I don't usually use when alone. All in all quite a tidy camp for entertaining a youth and also a chance to use my Frontier Stove which hadn't seen the light of day recently, I initially used it to get a quick brew in whilst the fire got going. The admin tarp was aligned South West to North East which meant the smoke drifted harmlessly past our seats although my son argued that the smoke had it in for him  wherever he was.

I had my tarp angled slightly diagonally to the admin one because a) It is longer and therefore needs the diagonal space between the fairly uniformly spaced trees and b) It meant I could pop a chisel closure at one end to defeat the small breeze still reaching us.

As this was a slightly different camp I'd brought a packed lunch to save on time but I was going to some Dutch oven chips to go with it. I carved two pieces of bamboo that I'd brought back from holiday to make some simple tongs but we decided to hold them off 'til tea as we had enough to eat. Curry and chips for tea it is.

I'd also made  a bread dough using Khorasan and Spelt flour (both ancient wheats) after dinner to make a loaf for  breakfast the next day.

The bread rose well, so well that the dough ended up being annoyingly a shade too developed for the Petromax FT1 that I'd used. I attempted to carefully lift into the slightly larger FT3.

It was actually tasty but I took my eye off the ball and it got a rather burnt posterior which I had to surgically remove. The burnt base did however double up as a camp frisbee as the small video above demonstrates. Well it would be boring if everything turned out perfectly, even Ray Mears has his moments...like this one.

Once the bread was dealt with and stashed I positioned my reflector oven a little way back from the fire to help because my previously prepared curry needed a little help to be fully defrosted.

My son isn't a bushcraft skills type of person so we used part of the afternoon to look over a large Badger sett on the narrow road up to the top field, which I spectacularly missed last time, amongst other things and then made our way slowly back to get on with tea. The curry  being previously made left me fairly free to focus on making the  chips with junior. Here he is pressed into chipped potato production.

I used the Petromax FT3 Dutch oven that I'd made the bread in and half filled it with Sunflower oil, I then piled embers about a third of the way round it. The oil is then tested with a previously cut runty chip to see if it bubbles and when it does cook the chipped potatoes in small batches (to stop the oil cooling off) for about five minutes and then remove onto kitchen roll.

The embers are then piled up to around half way around the Dutch oven and the potato pieces cooked for around ten minutes to colour and crisp them. Perfect with salt and homemade Hawthorn Ketchup.

We didn't use all the potato so I re-invigorated the Frontier stove and par boiled the pieces so that they could be pan fried in my trusty Primus pan as in the morning for an extra for  breakfast. I had a pudding lined up but again we held it over to dinner the next day as we were stuffed.

 We also had a visit from the site's owner called Emma who had seen our set up and asked if she could take some pictures for publicity, three of which appeared on their Facebook page on August 5th. We had a good chat and she is definitely keen to get hobbyist bushcrafters to visit more and told me of a wood to go and investigate that doesn't often get used for camping.

After clearing up (yes, both of us) we had a quick drink and headed out to place my Bushnell trail camera near the previously reconnoitred badger sett near three entrances/ exits, baited the area with peanut and mealworms and decided to park ourselves on the opposite bank diagonally down from the camera to take our scent away.

We sat and sat and decided due to a bad case of numb bum that we would move about ten metres further down on a more comfortable looking ledge. After nearly two hours we decided to call it a day and placed our faith in my trail cam. I was more disappointed for my youngest as he really wanted to see one.

He did however capture this shot of some geese during the evening which he asked me to add to this blog.

Checking the fire over in the morning it was obvious that it had all but burnt out with not so much as a fire dog left. I grabbed one of the supplied eco fire lighter and some seasoned Birch that I had brought along and left the firelighter in the ashes to see if it took. It soon started smouldering and a gentle blow got the show started.

Once established I put some big pieces on as we had a cooked breakfast, dinner and held over pudding to do. I also slowly started introducing some briquettes because I sensed that my son was starting to have WiFi withdrawal and finishing off with them means that there is little in the way of solid material to deal with.

After breakfast I quickly went to grab the trail cam and investigate the wood mentioned by Emma last night. I reported back that pretty much all the peanuts and mealworms had disappeared and whilst looking out for them I smacked my head on a low branch but the trail camera didn't pick it up, just as well with the ensuing expletive! As for the wood I think I may have looked around the wrong half as it was a mature wood to die for but was nettle heavy. I'm back next month so I'll revisit. 

The one thing I noted was that there was recent evidence of badger, deer, pheasant and fox in a mud trap. Note the Vivobarefoot footwear for scale. I will be blogging about this newish purchase soon.

 

Upon my return I had a request to get dinner underway...The call of WiFi at home was kicking in. We had a simple to do Cajun chicken with onions, cherry tomatoes and peppers in some wraps. The held over pudding was to be an attempt at a recipe from issue 71 of Bushcraft and Survival Skills magazine which was apple doughnuts.

They were blissfully easy to make with a couple also having peanut butter in and despite it not being something I'd usually choose to eat they were soft and tasty with a bit of cream and golden syrup.

With the car being close I'd started to slowly pack away bits and bobs away and the charcoal briquettes had reduced to nearly dust so I left the fire til last to allow the odd bits of wood to burn down too. I left my son striking his tent with more teenager-v-tent commentary.

I'd originally planned this as a solo trip but but I changed the itinerary to suit having someone along, so more poshcraft than bushcraft with not much in the way of a time slot to start any craft projects but it was still an enjoyable break and whilst the trees in the wood are only around twenty years or so old they are still serviceable for hammocking and the right to pick a spot for a fire pit is a definite plus. This is the leave no trace campsite as we were about to hit the road.

Oh, and I got a footage of a field mouse and rabbit eating the peanuts and mealworms...Absolutely no Badger action.