This weekend’s National Trust Wildcamp was, to say the least, a little damp. That didn’t stop 16 hardy souls from joining us in Hatfield Forest. I certainly admired their enthusiasm despite a heavy drenching especially on Saturday night .
After arriving on Friday and a few settling in briefings and chores, JP went through knife safety and fire-lighting on Saturday morning.
In JP’s own words, you only get one chance when the wood is damp and the ground is wet. good preparation is the key. Needless to say, there was soon a nice little demo fire which was replicated under Mike’s tidy parachute.
This made the whole base camp a cosy affair. Mike (a volunteer NT warden) helped us out and kindly left his parachute up from an earlier session.
The tracking session was popular with the kids as they spotted an array of signs and evidence on the woodland floor. This was after an equally popular Hunter Force mission. A vicious down pour made us all scuttle for the parachute though.
JP and I later followed a very recent badger trail that ended up at an active sett. An dead, old, female badger no more than a couple of weeks or so into decay was on the edge of the sett. Incessant rain turned us away once again but we left a trail cam up to see if we could capture on film any occupants. I’ll let you know the result when we download the cam.
After a warming by the fire, we all decided to turn in early.
Despite a drenching there were smiles in the morning and everyone mentioned how well the weekend went. The kids loved the forest and the adults, some initially sceptical, promised to return.
We will upload the badger footage soon. Thanks for the visit.
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