Woodland camping trip

So what would you expect with five men camping in the woods? Fire, beer, BBQ and shooting? You'll not be surprised then...

Our track repairs have stood up to the test, allowing us to drive the car and trailer right up to the clearing:
and as if by magic, a tent appeared:
Well, actually, it took nearly an hour, with Tracy giving me a hand, as the lads were stuck in a traffic jam on the A21.... The view from the other end of the clearing gives some perspective - yes, this is a big tent!
The lads soon arrived, and settled into their new home for the weekend:
The sun also came out, and Andy looked like he wished he had more hair to keep him in the shade:
while Phil got busy making what looked like a spear, though he assured us it was a walking stick, and wouldn't be used in defence against wild boar! ;-)
I fired up the BBQ in the usual way with a small wood fire in the base, then loaded up the charcoal made last weekend, which worked beautifully.
Of course, it wasn't long before the airgun came out for some target practice, shooting cans half way along the clearing:
Andy and Jon were the best shots, although in this case it looks like a dispute over scoring and a shortage of ammo led to a cruder form of combat:

There were some more wholesome activities too, such as log splitting to keep the fire going:
I also cut up some logs with the chainsaw, ready for collection on Sunday morning by a customer. After this we all needed a rest.
As the sun set, the obligatory fire was built up. Actually, we had three fires - the main one, the camp fire, and the charcoal kiln making another batch, but I always was a bit of a pyromaniac...

The new variation this time was adding some air to the fire through a steel pipe, though we quickly moved on from blowing down it to using one of the airbed pumps. It got hot enough to soften glass, this wine bottle ended up flat by the end opf the evening, though sadly it cracked during cooling.
To give you an idea of the heat generated though, here's the end of the steel pipe straight out of the fire:
We also went out for a walk round the wood at about midnight, but made far too much noise to see anything interesting, though we did hear an owl that seemed to be following us - it was probably annoyed we were chasing off all its prey!
Rich got a nice artistic photo of an oak in the dark though, it's inspired me to go up and try some night-time photography soon:
Well, that's pretty much it - we basically had a BBQ, some beers and a good laugh. Looking forward to doing it again some time.

I'm onto my summer work schedule now: 3 days a week, with August mostly off, so we should be up at the wood a lot more, and hopefully putting some interesting posts up on the blog...

Bye for now, Mike