Bushcraft intermediate training day

Back in March I went on a Bushcraft training day and in the summer I took those new skills into the field.

I got the chance to join a bushcraft intermediate training day to learn more about cooking and other add-ons.

The Chimney Starter was a piece of gold I was previously unware of and one was winging it's way from Amazon before the mud on my boots was dry.  It should stop hours of HWMBO wafting newspaper over BBQ coals.

It gets them white hot in 20 minutes with almost zero effort.

With the charcoal heating nicely, we started on the 'real' fire.

Learning how to build a good fire that is easy to light and will stay lit is a great skill to have.

And we were soon away and not cooking on gas.

For the roast chicken, we wrapped 5 white hot coals in tin foil and stuffed it with them.  This starts the chicken cooking from inside.

The whole chicken was then wrapped in foil, sat on a bed of hot coals and some more placed on top and covered completely over.

And then left near the fire for about 2 hours.

The good quality, long lasting coals keep their heat and cook it.

The dutch ovens were set up.  We had a lesson first thing about how to season them and never to wash them in soapy water.

The vegetables hung on the tripods with the occasional stir.






The chicken was temperature tested a few times, it was going great guns.

The second chicken was set to steam.  sat on a lid inside a billy with a couple of inches of water to create steam and then a lid on it.  It has to be kept topped up, not too much water but enough to see it bubbling in the bottom of the pan.  Because a lot of water came out of the chicken it look like it was having a jacuzzi at one point!

This made for a really moist meat, you could put an onion in with it for a bit of flavour and use the water to make gravy.









Cake was a must.  We lined the dutch ovens with grease proof paper, sliced apples into the bottom, added some brown sugar and a cake mix.  Lid on and coals put under and on top of the ovens.

It baked beautifully, once done you can take the coals away and the ovens will just keep the pudding warm.

A vegetable soup was mixed with water from the kelly kettle and all three courses were cooking away.

With some trout placed in wet newspaper gently cooking too as an added bonus.

The trout was moved around to where ever there was a good heat but the paper would not catch.

Finally we just needed to steamed chicken to be fully cooked through, so the fire was built a little harder around it to really get the water boiling.

With the gravy made from boiling water from the kelly kettle we were good to eat and an amazing meal it was too.

All food tastes better when cooked outside on an open fire but this really was a tasty meal.









After lunch what would be better than to hang some hammocks and climb into them















...for a little while

















Apart from the fact we still had water filtration, pitching tarpaulins in a squillion different ways for different purposes and lighting fires with a bow drill.

I'm really going to have to ramp up my knotting skills if I'm going to get any further with this.   Fisherman's and prusik being the 2 that threw me today. My knotting a shamefully bad.

'Please try harder' will not be written on my gravestone it will be "For the love of God will you just try to remember for more than one day, you've been shown this a billion times already"

I am loving this sort of fun in a field at the moment but I suspect I may be starting to hit my level of expertise.  I think I could be the first fatality on the advanced course!  I am also wondering how long HWMBO will be prepared to put up with my post course spending habit of 'must have' things that then live in the shed/garage/loft for 360 days of the year!!