August camping trips in the wood

Wow, that was a busy month for camping and visiting the wood! I think we had a total of four camping trips with various people, and numerous other day/evening visits as well. I'll start with a few of the group photos that often get taken...

Metal detecting with my brother Andy, nephew Joshua, and friend Matt with his family:

Friends from work, some of whom camped:

Friends from Rye:

Friends from Sidley:

We also had a visit from the Udimore Gardeners Club (link with photos)

Every visit that includes some hours of darkness now includes using the rope swing in the dark, which is quite a surreal experience. Here's our friends Josh and Ben having a go!

Toasting marshmallows round the fire has also been popular, as well as setting fire to sticks and waving them around...

One benefit this summer has been our supercharged fire pit. I posted a few weeks ago about how we made it, but now it has a new feature, based on an old PC fan that my friend Olly gave me:

This is powered from the 12V solar PV system that I often take to the woods when we're camping to use for lighting:

The result is an almost smoke-free fire, which can put out a lot of heat, or be small and controlled for cooking:

We've done a few jobs over the summer too, such as moving logs and making racks to store them in:

Cutting chunks off a tree butt to use as a work surface back at the campsite:

and also relocating the toilet, where my brother Andy helped with the digging:

and my nephew Joshua checked the new hole was deep enough:

The old toilet is safely filled in and the new one ready for use now:

Joshua had a really good time in the woods, and it was his first ever camping trip! So everything was new, from where he ate breakfast...

To having to scare things away...

And one day when we popped back to the house for a shower (we thought 4 days without one might not be a good idea...) the excitement overcame him...

He also really enjoyed playing with Matt and Anita's son Ishan when they came to stay for one of the nights:

The metal detecting (see the first picture in this post) yielded some great results:

The trawl includes a shell from a WW2 plane (unexploded, so it's been carefully disposed of now)

and two 20mm shell casings, probably from a Spitfire:

Here's the three of them side by side:

We saw lots of wildlife during August too, though most of it when Tracy and I were there on our own, as 3 and 4 year old boys don't usually play quietly! Here's a few pics...

A caterpillar (Pale Tussock moth?)

a Speckled Wood butterfly:

a Gatekeeper butterfly:

One of many large beetles, which are now dying by the dozen as Autumn approaches:

a dragonfly:

a Robin, flitting around the trees in the wayleave:

which coincidentally looks great on a summer morning:

I was particularly pleased with these pics of a Wood Pigeon, which has been making a nest near our camp (they nest all year if they think they can):

And last but not least, we discovered a second Alder Buckthorn tree (well, shrub at present), this time along the public footpath. This is good as it's the food plant of the Brimstone caterpillar - and I was pleased to see some leaves had been eaten!

Well that's the story for August. I'm doing my London-Brighton bike ride soon, so after that I'll have more time for blogging as I won't be training!

Mike

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Clearing up from the weekend

We had a very busy weekend, with all kinds of visitors to the wood. Although I've done a few posts, there's still some odds and ends I'd like to mention. I'll start with yet another bluebells photo though, this time form the top end of our wood, where I'd not been since the bluebells came out:OK, on to other stuff. I already mentioned the SWOG butterfly ID day, but what I hadn't mentioned was that our friends Rich and Penny camped in the wood the night before, as they live a fair distance away. I was very impressed that they didn't use a normal tent, they used a mosquito net tent, and rigged a tarpaulin over that - and a good job too, as it rained! Rich proved to be a natural with the air rifle:
and Penny hit the target first time too, but I'm not allowed to post the photo of her as she's pulling a funny face! :-)

As you probably already know, Tracy found a WW2 bullet casing in the woods, but there was plenty of digging for other stuff with our friends Dave & Anna and Greg & Amy, who came for the day on Monday:Nothing yet in this hole - it's a strong signal, but must be deep, so it could be something big. Hope it's not a live WW2 bomb!

While we were walking round we saw this pheasant's egg, I assume a chick hatched from it:
and also saw another that someone had left on top of this stump. Looks like something attacked it, and it's not going to hatch now...
The pond is looking very green again
and I was pleased to see this hawthorn growing nicely. The spray of fresh shoots are coming out where I damaged a branch during felling in the winter. I'd cut the branch of cleanly after this, so I'm pleased to see that this has worked:
The same happened to a young oak last winter, and I was very annoyed, having missed it with at least ten trees and then hit it with the last one. Anyway, I'd pollarded it, hoping that it would regrow and that the shoots would be out of reach of the rabbits:
so I was delighted to see this on the side of it:
It's much slower growing than the chestnut or birch, but we're going to keep cutting them along the sides of the path every few years, so this oak should get enough light to keep growing. Who knows, as a pollard it may grow to be an interestingly shaped tree one day? I'll keep an eye on it.

Mike

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