Gathering Our Thoughts

The countdown to the Wilderness Gathering has begun . Not only is this a great social event, but it’s also a great opportunity to show people what’s on offer from Woodlife Trails.

JP and I will be taking our usual nature-based exhibits down with us to show people what tracks and signs can be found on the woodland floor (now dubbed our Table of Death – on account of the skulls and skins) and our high-powered microscope which opens up a whole new world. This gives people a taster of what they can expect when they come on our Bushcraft and Tracking courses.

The owl pellet examination area will also be there for the youngsters (and adults) to extract the small mammal bones from the pellet. There will be a new competition called “Match The Track”. No prizes for guessing what that’s about!

We are delighted to have George Aitchison with us helping out on the stand. He will be displaying and demonstrating some primitive tech.

Our demonstrations will also include friction fire-lighting, spoon-carving, tracking and anything else we can fit in by popular demand.

My only ‘official’ duty this year is to give a talk on Saturday about “Bushcraft and the Law”.

As usual, we will be responsible for the Extreme Baking competition. All the proceeds of this goes to charity.

 

Of course, we will be promoting the Woodlife Network as well as Woodlife Trails, and, new for this year, we will have a limited number of Woodlife polo shirts for sale. The shirts are more of an olive green/brown than pictured with the Woodlife logo on the left breast.

For the first time, I can reveal the 2011 design of the Woodlife key-fob, which will also be on sale…

I didn’t realise that people were actually looking forward to seeing this year’s new design. Some people have collected all the previous year’s – so I hope you like this one. It was designed by Mrs P who slaved away helping me put them together. She was paid well though. She got a key fob!

Here are the previous designs in case you’ve missed out…

2009

2010

It’s a lot of organisation and still a bit to be done but we’ll get there. If you are going along – we hope to see you there. If you’re not, there’s still time to get your ticket.

Thanks for the visit.