A Weekend in the woods

Our activities over the last few group nights have been building up to this, our weekend out in the woods. One of the highlights of the woodcraft year.

As well as the fun of sleeping out, and cooking over the campfire it's also fantastic to join up with the Bristol venturers (13 - 16 year olds) and see some familiar faces.

Something we haven't tried before was cooking a chocolate cake inside an orange. Although I think we might need a bit more practice, or more embers. Quite a few did need to go back in the fire for a second round of cooking.

Lots of time to chill out and of course do a bit of whittling.

Night time brought out the local wildlife

In the morning it's time for everyone's favorite breakfast in a bag.

Lanterns

Lots of work went into making these little lanterns. Sewing a bag and using rope making techniques to twist our own cord for hanging them up.

You don't quite get the full effect until dark though.

End of the summer term

Summer evenings mean lots of time for playing games outside, and tonight we also found time to practice setting up our shelters, ready for our Autumn night under the stars.

This one makes a great winter shelter, nice and low to the ground to keep the warm air inside, and steep sides to shed the rain.

This one works best as a summer shelter Higher off the ground makes it easy to stand p and work underneath when you need a bit of shade and means there should be a nice breeze through to stop it getting too hot.

A night in miniture

The challenge was for each group to design a pan support, strong enough to hold a pan of food over the fire too cook. The catch was to do the whole thing on a small scale.

Each group was given some straws (wooden poles), plastercine (earth), String (rope) and a plastic cup of jelly (pan of baked beans). Some designs are perhaps more likely to work "in the wild" than others.

And how else would we round of a cooking in minutre evening, but toasting mini marshmallows. Yummy.