Wild Camping - The Responce

This Government appreciates the potential benefits of wild camping in England and its attractiveness to campers who already have the opportunity to camp in the wild in Scotland.

The Land Reform Act in Scotland allows for wild camping, but the land issues and the legislation in England are somewhat different. The introduction of wild camping in England would be a controversial issue, which would require both significant consultation and legislative change.

On open access land wild camping is prohibited under Schedule 2 of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, which lists all restricted activities. Therefore, new Regulations would be required to exclude wild camping as a restricted activity. Any change to the current rules on wild camping in National Parks and Ministry of Defence land would require new primary legislation.

The Government has no plans to allocate the necessary resources to consider proposals for such legislation at present, and is concentrating on following up the successful introduction of 750,000 hectares of open access land with new legislation on access to the coast in the Marine Bill, which is currently going through Parliament.

So that's two petitions and twice the government has decided to do nothing!

I was going to write you a long post moaning about the state of the nation and the lackwits who are governing us, but to be fair Aktoman has raised all the necessary points without sounding like an old fart so I'll just point you in his direction.
And for those of you resident in the UK, or carrying a UK passport, urge you to get involved in stage two of the campaign for us to be able to take a nap in the big out doors that our forefathers made such sacrifice for, before some bright spark in the cabinet office invents a way to put a meter between us and the fresh air.

Hurrumpf!!

Bushwacker

Happy Blogday To Me! Bushwackin’ 365

Suddenly it’s time to do one of those ‘that was the year that was’ reviews that TV stations use as cheap programming on new years eve. A whole year has passed since I formalised my journey and started telling all of you about it. I’ve not been deluged with animal rights nutters telling me I’m a cheerleader for the forces of darkness, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the number of people who have told me that they couldn’t do it themselves but understand why the wild food journey is so important to me. First things first, I’m always a bit amazed that you are actually reading this, and enduringly grateful to those of you who could be bothered to chip in with the odd comment, it’s made keeping the blog going a lot easier. The year has been full of soaring highs and crushing lows in my other life, the one I lead outside of the adventure in this blog, and the blog has helped. It’s given me a focus outside of work, a perspective, a purpose. The other positive output has been a new found confidence in my writing. Like it or loathe it, mock my spelling and poor grasp of grammar, but there’s no one else writing anything quite like it, it’s mine and, there are a growing number of posts that I’ve started to feel quite pleased with.
I’ve done errhm ‘some’ work on the skill set that my hunt will require, re awakened the kit fetishist within, took a bit more exercise (ok babe a very little bit – but I have dug the vegetable patch over!), expanded the range of my reading, learned the basics of bare bow archery, hunted rabbits with ferrets, used a shotgun to turn flying ashtrays to dust, and cast my first fly at a wild trout. My compound bow still languishes in the garage, certainly not unloved, but unused. I’ve found an archery club I could attend but they are stickbow only as their secretary told me her butt wasn’t big enough. I was confused too until I remembered that a butt is the traditional name for an archery practice ground!

Lessons in feral failure?
When I stared fishing I learned three knots, and for some reason my brain has only assigned enough memory to its knots database to remember those three, I can tie them in the dark, in the rain, wherever. Regular readers will have noticed that while I confidently announced that I would be making my own set of purse nets for rabbiting, so far all I have to show for my efforts are some tangled pieces of string – described in the word[s] of one observer as ‘shocking’.

Tanning Hides?
Firstly I’d like to try to shift the blame onto Mrs SBW – she found my rabbit brains in the freezer and chucked them out. So that was brain tanning out the window. Sadly the rest of the failings are mine. Tanning hides is harder than it looks, one rabbit skin is now hard enough to make a knife sheath from and the other two are still hiding from Mrs SBW in the freezer.

Fitness and Mass Reduction?
I’m too embarrassed to talk about it; there is only one worthwhile prescription.
Eat less and do more

The wild food highlights were;
Bunnies ferreted out by James’s little helpers. The legs cooked with tomato, paprika, and black olives. The loins rolled into spirals, poached, browned and served on top of large slices of black pudding (traditional English blood sausage).
A haunch of Muntjac; which turns out to be the perfect size of eating deer for suburban dads on portion control, skinny bints and picky city kids. I casseroled mine in a gravy of shallots, plonk red and Hoisin sauce. Yummy.
GMT Chestnuts (harvested in Greenwich park) eaten with pancetta and leeks in a cream sauce.
Road kill Pheasant – Although I haven’t had the opportunity to either attend a traditional English pheasant shoot (which looks from the outside like a sort of real life video game shoot ‘em up - for £1000 ($2000) a day!!) or join a walked up woodland hunt. I have been keeping my eyes open and have been pleasantly surprised by the number of daft birds who made the mistake of playing in the traffic. With delicious consequences!

As with every ‘that was the year that was’ round up there are of course some awards to dish out.

On the kit collecting front the Best in Test award is shared by the
Fallkniven F1, covered in scratches, sharpened, blunted and sharpened again, a genuinely bombproof confidence inspiring tool.
The Bahco Laplander Saw: which has proved itself to be thoroughly deserving of its ‘bushcraft’ reputation - lightweight, cheap and a very, very efficient cutting tool. [Apparently there are; hardwood, softwood, and greenwood blades available, but the card mine came attached to made no mention of which blade it’s equipped with. It has happily cut all three.

If there were a category for best gadget (ok there is) it would have to go the spyderco Sharpmaker. It does what it says on the tin.

The Bushwacker Style Award
Rogue for their great hats – described by one observer as ‘Like and outdoor Bez hat, way cool’

Services To Bushwacking – furthering the cause.

In the afield category
James Marchington – for teaching me to hunt with ferrets

In the a-stream category
Jeremiah Quinn – for his inspirational fly fishing lesson

In the best blog comment category
Mungo – Butcher, Bushcrafter, Project manager and Surrealist.

Thanks for reading, stick with it – it gets better!
Your pal
SBW

Show The Bushwacker To The Rabbit

Sunday morning dawned cold and transport-less, so I dressed up in a base layer of nylon sportswear, hoping the static generated would act as on-board central heating, with a layer of cotton work wear on top to keep out the thorns. I chose a bag that I'd be able to hose down if I needed to and said goodbye to the kids. As I was leaving the house I could hear Mrs SBW sniggering and singing Simon and Garfunkel's well known ode to successful rabbit hunting

'Bright eyes,Burning like fire.Bright eyes,How can you close the pain. How can the light that burned so brightly Suddenly burn so pale? Bright eyes.'

After three changes of train due to engineering works I was finally on my way to meet James for a spot of old-school rabbit hunting. With Ferrets.

And what a great way to spend the day it is,James and Sara met me at the station and we drove through the Sussex countryside. For readers in the US - it looks just like the farmed parts of my adopted home of Northern Virginia, except the roads are narrower and the cars are smaller.

James's dad's place is big enough to have several warrens all in different states of occupation. The biggest coney conurbation we investigated had been flooded out by the recent rains and was unoccupied. Of the five warrens we tried, two yielded a total of three bunnies.

The Ferrets are charming, they have an animated curiosity about them and while I'm sure rabbits view them as dangerous thugs, to me they look very pet-like and from what I've been reading are easy to keep as companions and hunters. Here in the UK their role in feeding a hungry nation is quite well documented with references in court papers going back at least as far as the twelfth century when a ferreter was listed as part of the Royal Court. Today Ferrets ownership and hunting counjours up an images of working class countrymen in flat caps and long coats (to hide the booty) with bulging trousers using them for poaching for the pot or pest control for the land owner but it wasn't always the case. In the 1300's you'd have needed an annual income of some forty shillings (I'm not exactly sure of the exchange rate - but it was quite a lot of money) to own a ferret and the penalty for unlicensed ownership would have been harsh. King Richard II issued a decree in 1384 allowing one of his clerks to hunt rabbits with ferrets and they're mentioned again in 1390 with a law prohibiting the use of ferrets on Sunday when feeding your family wouldn't be allowed to interfere with marshal archery practice.

Ferreting is very simple, at the end of the afternoon I asked James if there was anything more I needed to know and he replied 'that's about it'.
First you need a business of ferrets, two seems to be the preferred number. I'd recently read that one male one female was considered the best ratio, with males being more aggressive and females being more through, James reckoned that whatever you had would do at a pinch. We used the modern locator collars which certainly made things a lot easier when it cam to the digging. In days gone by you'd have had to tie a tread to your Ferret and let it pay out as the Ferret went down the hole, when the Ferret stopped taking line you'd know that it had either killed a rabbit and was taking a nap (something they're notorious for), or it had backed the bunny into a hole with no exit and wasn't letting it out. Either way it would be time to start digging along the tread until you got to the action. With a locator you're spared a hell of a lot of digging as you can find the spot from above ground and dig directly down. In the wet clay laden soil it's still hard work. If your lucky and it all goes according to plan, you've put you ferrets into the right holes the rabbits bolt out of the warren into 'purse' nets that you've secured over the exits. As the rabbit barrels into the net it's own momentum pulls the drawstring tight capturing it. These bolted bunnies are the most highly prized as without teeth marks from the Ferrets their flesh is untainted by coagulating blood and the make slightly less gamey eating.

On the subject of eating special thanks and a commendation must go to Janet (james's mum) for the huge, hearty country lunch she served us that kept out the cold and the AMAZING bread and butter pudding she made.

James has posted a video of our hunt here.

As Ferrets usually come in pairs, they offer up some amusing naming opportunities.
James had a pair called Dead and Buried and a lad called Robin who lives in Scotland and has a Ferreting blog calls his business Purdey and Kalashnikov!

At the school gates I ran into young R, (well he ran into me) a lad in bushwacker jnrs class, he's absolutely fascinated with everything 'survival' and was proudly showing me his copy of The Dangerous Book for Boys when his mum showed up. She'd heard about the forthcoming trip from Mrs SBW and wanted to know if I'd been. I told her we'd gotten three rabbits
S. 'where are they? in a shed in the garden?
SBW 'No! they're in the freezer!'
S. 'NO!!!'
She scuttled off dragging young R behind her leaving me wondering is she still speaking to us or are we now a family of evil rabbit killing hillbillys?
As they say up north 'there's owt as queer as folk'
Thanks for reading
SBW

PS If your interested in getting started yourself Deben have a DVD, sell the locator collars and net making kits.

Picture Credit
Stained glass, Long Melford,Suffolk. Picture by chris chapman
Have a look at his fascinating site about the motif and it's appearance in medieval art across the world.

I Want One - A Not So Occasional Series Pt2

I keep having a fantasy where there's erhm 'less of me to love' and as the weather warms up I'm thinking a bike ride to and from the office would be a step in the right direction. i could fix up my forgotten bike from the back of the shed, but it needs a lot of new parts, or i could use the inspiration of a gleaming new machine as impetus.
Or i could keep it legal by putting the money towards paying my tax bill...... Ho Hum

Whatever you decide to do with the new year, i hope it works out better than you intended. Or as the heyoka's heyoka once said
"May you live in interesting times - and get to be a part of them"
SBW
CHARGE a very cool bike co.

Way Better Than The Sunday Papers

In a further attempt to put the Sunday papers out of business by giving you something more worthwhile to read, I’m pleased to present the literary wit of Albert A Rasch.
Mr Rasch blogs an excellent chronicle of his adventures afield. He has a lively turn of phrase, you’ll like him.

These are two of my favorites.


Charged! Hog Hunting Adventures.
Charged they were, misadventures they nearly were!

“We drove up to the guides ramshackle house, the driveway entrance marked by a couple of mismatched fire hydrants (ill gotten to be sure). A couple of hounds of questionable pedigree lifted their mange ridden heads to see what the wind was dragging in, and wearily dropped them back into the dust wallow they were in. A little cur with half an ear came up happily to meet us, his tail just a waggin, and a look on his face, that in hindsight could have easily been taken as "Please, take me away from here!" But I was more taken by the charnel smell in the air; a mix between a slaughterhouse and a municipal waste dump. It wouldn't be long before I was to find out what caused that peculiar and most disagreeable odor.”

A Nice Walk In The Park
Where fitness is tested, and lessons in preparedness are learned.

“As I was licking the last bit of bacon grease, tomato, and mayo off my finger tips, I thought of how fortuitous I was to live on some land, far from the foolishness of subdivisions and McMansions. I made a comment to my wife about it. She nodded in agreement, and offhandedly remarked that, not only had I not shot any of my firearms in quite some time, but that I hadn’t even done any of my usual scouting either. Handing me the keys to the gun safe, she said I should really go and spend some quality time by myself and do a little shooting and maybe some scouting. “Who knows,” she said, “there could be a hog on the prowl somewhere.” Well I certainly didn’t need anymore encouragement.”

Have a good weekend
Bushwacker

Deer Scrap!!

'Always hunt with someone else', is usually good advice.
However there's an exeption that proves every rule.

With a 'friend' like the cameraman, you're probably safer hunting on your own!

Thanks to MB for the link.
Bushwacker

Mother! Behave Yourself!!

Just in case you didn’t believe me when I told you about the foraging septuagenarian matriarchs!
As I was taking this picture I got into conversation with one of the park guys who told me he blamed the current crop of wildfood TV show’s.
“They only show cooking, people don’t know when they’re ripe and they just try and pull ‘em down. It’s a problem for us”.
Keep ‘em peeled
Bushwacker

Shh Keep 'em Under Your Hat

They've arrived! Ripe and ready to gather!
I picked (picked up?) this crop yesterday.
Had a few for tea, after last nights running club.
More details and Recipes in my next post
(I didn’t have a camera with me and there’s something in the park I want to show you)
Bushwacker

Those New Chestnuts

Like the our pal the American Bushman I’m noticing the shift in the seasons; London was decidedly nippy today, and the prelude to last nights fitness training was a drum roll of chattering teeth as we gathered at the park gate.
I’m not sure where it went (I’ve even been having salad for breakfast!) but I’d certainly let things slide in the last week. The regime of running, sit ups, burpees, star jumps and press ups seemed almost as tortuous as the first time I attended. I sweated like a carthorse and my legs felt like I had tree trunks tied to them. Having struggled and slithered across the wet grass praying for the strength to continue or at least a merciful end to the torment.

Having survived I started to think of myself as a rather heroic figure. Back at home; as I lay panting and moaning on the front room floor, I was quickly disabused of even this crumb of comfort. Mrs SBW delivered a ‘motivational’ lecture about the ads she seen on TV where tubby fellas of a certain age are putting their health at risk by eating and drinking to their harts content. She succinctly pointed out that it was my harts (fat) content that means it’s not a choice. I will be going back, rain or shine, like it or not.
As Carl the PTI keeps pointing out “there’s plenty of time to think about it later, just do it”.

The park is the site of an ancient hunting ground and although we’re denied the chance to shoot (or even trap) the squirrels or stalk the deer there are still some foraging opportunities to be had. I’ve only ever had chestnuts and puffball mushrooms, but my foraging days have only just begun there must be more edible species for a re-wilded bushwacker to find. The chestnuts are getting a little riper but the first sightings of the granny migration that signals their ripeness are still a little way off.
It would seem I’m not the only person visiting the park hoping to invoke the aid of the gods, I saw this offing left at the foot of one of the bigger chestnuts trees.

The history of the site as a place of worship is at least as old as the roman invasion/settlement of Brittan. Discovered in 1902 the park has the remains of the mosaic floor of a roman shrine, supposedly dedicated to Diana the Huntress an imported deity the Romans took to their harts.

The area is steeped in history; first as a hunting ground and later as a pleasure park for the royals. Just as the invasion/settlement of Virginia was getting under way Le Notre (the gardener to Louis XIV) was commissioned by king Charles II to design the layout of the park we see today. The avenues of Sweet Chestnuts were planted from Spanish seed and some of them are now 400 years old.

I was more than a little off in my tree-size-estimate this fella is 24.5 feet around the trunk!
More trunk reduction for the bushwacker to follow – thanks for reading everbody
Bushwacker

Running, Eggs, And Posts I Re-Read

Last night I had a glimpse of the future, a bit like Scrooge seeing the Ghost of Running Club yet To Be….. And re-read some of my favorite blog posts

This morning I’ve just had the perfect poached egg for my breakfast, it smiled at me from the plate, sitting next to some toast and a pile of smoked salmon – a boy needs his Omega 3’s!

The holy grail of poached eggs: add just two drops of vinegar to a shallow pan of gently boiling water, put some spin on the water creating a vortex. As soon as you crack the egg and slowly add it to the centre of the spinning water, you can see the egg white coalesce into the perfect form.

Towards the end of our run I moved briefly from pound, pound, pant, pant wheeze to that fluid movement where the amount of effort drops considerably, but the amount of forward motion rises. Steps that had crashed against the ground now have a lighter touch, the jarring of my spine gave way to a glimpse of the serenity of motion I’d forgotten I could have.

Two of my favorite ‘good eggs’ of the bloggersphere

Pablo has a very handy list of REASONS, (proper valid reasons honey), for buying ESSENTIAL kit from Ebay.

The Hobo Stripper separates the person from their behaviour, and spends her post remembering angels with dirty faces.

Bushwacker.
PS
Sorry I didn’t explain that very well at all
How to spin water:
Carefully stir the boiling water with a spoon, until it is ‘spinning’
SBW

That Old Chestnut.

I’m eating one of the last apples from our tree, as I recover from the mornings exertions. Outside its still sunny but the season is starting to change, apples over, blackberries still good, chestnuts about to begin.

On the sofa my legs are aching, and I wanna go back to bed, but the goal is in sight.
Finally I feel I’m on the road to fitness, I’ve attended Military Fitness three times this week!!!! Twice to the running club, and once at the military fitness class.

Trying to keep my head up as I ran I saw that the chestnuts are in abundance, and will be starting to fall in a week or two. I really love collecting them with Bushwacker Jnr, and eating them with pork. I’m not so keen on peeling them, but its a small price to pay for the satisfaction that wildfood brings.

In the park some of the chestnut trees are literally hundreds of years old, as I ran (OK speed-waddled), I made a note to dig out the big tape measure and try to find out just how old they actually are. Some of them look at least ten feet (3m) around the trunk.

The best sign that the worthwhile nuts are falling is to watch out for the migrating herds of - Chinese Grannies! Seriously, the nuts that fall first aren’t really worth the effort, but as soon as the big fellas start to drop there’ll be septuagenarians matriarchs using broom handles and plastic bags as yokes, harvesting the parks bounty.

While we were collecting last year we’d often meet a few dog walking toffs who know the nuts are edible but are surprised that anyone would bother, they are encouraging in that patronising yet indulgent way toffs often have.

The nuts are never as big as the Spanish imports but some how they taste a little sweeter.
I’ll let you know how I get on.


Bushwacker.

Sharpening and Reprofiling

Oh the pain! Whinge-moan. Whinge. Moan. Running club! Battered. Whinge moan.
Delicious fried food danced before my eyes.
Imaginary Elk snorted contemptuously and sauntered away over the great mountain range that separates my homeland from the lands of my dreams.
Have you ever heard an Elk laugh?
Well they did, safe in the knowledge that I’d never get my wheezing butt within rifle range. Bow range? Ha!! They’re still laughing now.
Bushwacker.

The stunning picture is of the appropriately named cardiac range

Why Weight?

The morphic resonances of the bloggersphere never cease to amaze me. Just as the American Bushman was posting ‘unloading superfluous gear’ BoB and I were having a conversation along similar lines. As well as using his visit as an opportunity to give me the Opinels he told me the location of a long-time-no-see Trangia stove that he didn’t have a need for. As things do, the conversation rambled round to talking about the lightening the load, travelling with as little kit as possible, while still having everything you need to look after yourself. I showed BoB the amazing Anti Gravity Gear site and the caldera stove system, which is basically a Trangia that’s been seriously slimmed down.
BoB said he’d seen an article from the 1950’s where guys going on a climbing expedition carrying framed rucksacks had wielded up the holes in the frames, enabling them to use their frames as fuel bottles.

As even the most cursory look at the scouting and hunting technologies of the first nations shows, the need-for-speed in backcountry travel is as old as backcountry travel itself. Saxton Pope took instruction from Ishi’s in the art and science of travelling light.

‘In our early training with Ishi, the Indian, he taught us to look before he taught us to shoot. "Little bit walk, too much look," was his motto. The roving eye and the light step are the signs of the forest voyageur.
The ideal way for an archer to travel is to carry on his shoulders a knapsack containing a light sleeping bag and enough food to last him a week.....This will weigh less than ten pounds. With other minor appurtenances in the ditty bag, including an arrow-repairing kit, one's burden is less than twenty pounds, an easy load...... If you have a dog, make him carry his own dry meal in little saddle-bags on his back...

Nessmuk was also an early devotee, taking it as a focus in the classic Woodcraft and Camping.

While I was looking for a downloadable copy Nessmuks book for you I found Nessmuking, a site about super lightweight canoeing with this interesting ‘gear list’ challenge.
How light can you get a 35-day pack?

Last word goes to Mors Kochanski
"The more you know, the less you carry."
Bushwacker.

Battue: French For Bushwacking.

Battue: Whacking (or battering) bushes to flush out game animals.


I’m back, the sojourn to southern France is over and I’ve a few tails to tell you about, some of them fishy and some of them boorish.

But first the bad news; bad news for the boars, the french boar-hunting season gets under way next week and there are more double express rifles heading into the woods than ever stalked the African plains. And it’s bad news for me. I’m a long way from the Languedoc. Bah!

Like most things french, hunting ‘french style’ is very different to the aristocratic traditions of their english neighbours. Airs and graces are unnecessary, as are bespoke red coats and pedigree horses. No one is wearing a necktie. Where (and whether) you went to school is of no consequence. This is hunting ‘come as you are’. In France la chasse (the chase) is a great leveller. It’s for the rich and the poor, its enthusiasts are from the town and the country. The doctor with his exquisite double rifle stands alongside the barman with his great granddaddies under and over. While people with American hunting experience will recognise the camo and the slug guns, the french attitude to health and safety during le Battue will leave you, if not shaken, certainly very glad you brought along that blaze orange vest.

For la chasse there is no need to hang a tree stand and get to it before dawn, in france the hogs and bucks come to you. Every Sunday during the season at 8am, you down a couple of stiff drinks in the village square, then a drive out to the forest. The hunting association for the area will have elected a captain, and he will nominate who takes up position in the line, where the guns stand and wait, usually about fifty yards apart on the edge of the forest, and who runs with the dogs in le Battue or the team of beaters.

The beaters follow the dogs, which like their masters vary in temperament from the highly trained pedigree terrier, to the farmyard mutt. Brambles and bushes must be whacked, spiralling french horns are used for calling and despatching the hounds, with more blasts to signal to the line. This is hunting for the cooking pot. All game is fair game so as boars, rabbits and stags break cover they are turned towards the guns. Some of the beaters are also armed to insure nothing gets away. Chaos reigns. As the beaters near the line, and hopefully no one on the line has been shot this week, the horn blasts to tell the beaters to stop shooting and the line to turn to follow the fleeing prey.
Then its back to the village restaurant for a massive lunch with anything upwards of four courses and lots of wines and spirits before the whole thing begins again.

The season lasts until February – There’s still time to get out there. Wish me luck.

Asterix models

Still Wheezing And A Little Saw.

Not much to report on the fitness part of the project this week.
Sadly there was plenty of Un-Fitness to report on at (ominous drum roll) the Running Club.
Anyone on first name terms with your pal the Bushwacker will surely tell you the words ‘Bushwacker is running’ aren’t usually used in the same sentence unless the sentence ends ‘down to the Off Licence to get more beer, wine, ice, vodka.....’ with the ‘running’ part being a figure of speech. So it was with no small trepidation that I set off for further punishment from the British Military Fitness Crew at their Running Club.

Shock is probably the hardest thing for a person to fake or try to hide, and glee is the response it never occurs to anyone to hide. Most of the attendees of the running club didn’t bother hiding anything, once the shock had subsided they all wanted to stand next to me at the start of every ‘run’, so they could ‘burn me off at the lights’. I felt like the most talented self-confidence therapist in the world. They arrived half whipped expecting more ritual humiliation at the hands of the speed merchants, only to find that far from being the slowest or having the most pitiful wheezing noise, their day had come.
Some of my delighted classmates actually took to letting me catch up with them so the could redress the humiliation they had themselves suffered. Leaving me for dust.
Still if 'waddling' is half way between sleeping and running, I can at least say I met them half way.
Oh the pain of being a wuss, a fat, greedy, lazy...................

Saw these and thought you might find them useful

The Sven Saw (inc 1 blade) $24.99 spare blades $7.95 each


Tested against

The BCB Commando Saw (inc 3 blades) from £4.99 to £12. Will take generic replacement blades (approx £5 for £3.99) and a BCB Nato & US forces 28” eight strand wire saw, cut in two would make two replacement wire saws for £2.61


I’ve used the triangular Sven Saw a few times and the aggressive ‘bow saw’ type blade is certainly very good for
fire-wood-ish type cuts and will stand a lot of abuse. The saw is light, and durable. The triangulation that makes the saw so strong is also its weakness as not all of the blade can cut to the saws maximum depth. The design suffers where an exposed wing nut provides the blade tension. It's jagged and do you really want to have to carry a spare?

The first way the BCB wins is the smooth, square frame design that gives you the use of the whole length of the blade cutting through larger diameter logs. With a choice of three blades kept neatishly in the handle the BCB saw will cleanly cut wood, bone, plastics and metal. Where the BCB let itself down during my test was that the 'all purpose and hacksaw' blades supplied with the saw are not very good. In fairness, this is not a review of cheapo blades, better blades are easy to come by and the handle feels unbreakable. The wire saw is excellent, but was let down by the aluminium crimps that act as its end stops, which are woefully inadequate. One popped off on the saws second use, and the other was very easily pulled off with a pair of pliers. The blade that is supplied with the Sven Saw is much better quality (which you have to pay for), but limits you to rougher cuts. The BCB has an edge, in that on your travels it’ll take any brand of hardware store blade that’s 12-13”.

The Bottom Line:

Both saws are very good choices, strong, cheapish, and lightweight.
The BCB has a neater handle design, bombproof build quality and the option of the versatile and robust wire saw.
All for a fiver! Now that I've added better crimps (took five mins.-was very easy) it will be my choice every time.

http://www.svensaw.com/

BCB's site - lots of other cool stuff
http://webshop.bcbin.eu/index.php

You may get the Sven Saw for a buck or so less, but REI’s customer service is magic.
http://www.rei.com/product/404040

The best price I found for the BCB saw was at
http://www.ronniesunshines.co.uk/Items/269%20-%20copy?

Get Tough or Move South.

“...one must have a good pair of legs. If automobiles, elevators, and general laziness have not ruined your powers of locomotion, you may follow the dogs; otherwise, you had best stay at home.”
Dr Saxton Pope

So after a considerable hiatus, the Suburban Bushwacker took some unpaid exercise.
Actually it’s worse than that I’M PAYING THEM!!!

This time rowing in front of the TV down at the gym just isn’t going to do it.
I’m not preparing for a duck hunt or a fishing trip: this is an elk hunt, so I’ve enrolled with a military fitness crew.
Started by a retired major and staffed by serving physical training instructors these boys know blood, sweat and tears.
I’m yet to donate any blood.

We meet in the park for an hour of running and circuit training.
The group is divided into three; the green bibs - skinny determined looking people, all high as kites on endorphins.
The red bibs – smiling, full of life, people who chat to each other during the class.
Then bringing up the rear, in the blue bibs; the chubby folk. Needless to say your friend the Bushwacker is wheezing along with the desk jockeys and ready-meal addicts. I would be telling you about the burning pain of such a humiliation, but I honestly didn’t feel it. The burning pain all over my body meant I was incapable of any existential angst.
24 hours later I’m wishing that was still the case ! Oh the pain, the pain of being a wuss! Oh the pain of being a lazy, greedy wuss! Every glorious fatty, salty, sugary delicacy I’ve stuffed in my face is now dancing before my eyes.
When Bushwacker jnr woke me up in the middle of last night my stomach still ached so much I couldn’t go back to sleep. Awww!

British Military Fitness - Now UK wide
http://www.britmilfit.com/

Nike 5.0
Like socks with soles attached. I really like 5.0’s the low heel height means much greater stability, (how do chicks stay balanced on high heels?) and the articulation of the sole really does make them like walking barefoot.

Nalgene 0.5 litre
The best bottles ever! For reasons why the Nalgene is so good, lets look at how it trounces that traditional favorite the Sigg bottle.
Siggs may look good on the shelf (Sigg1 Nalgene 0) but like so many ‘outdoor classics’ they are crap.
They dent (Sigg1 Nalgene 1).
The neck is too narrow to insert anything wider than a straw-who would want to put ice in a drink? (Nalgene 2. Sigg1. Advantage Nalgene).
They corrode (Sigg1 Nalgene 3)
And they are way, way overpriced-look around you’ll see perfect copies for 15-20% of the price (Sigg1 Nalgene 4).
Nalgene wins!
If Sigg is ever to regain it’s once exulted place in my pack, its time for a major rethink, aluminum just ain’t doing it anymore.
Dear Sigg
‘If you can’t run with the big dogs, keep your puppy ass on the porch’
Bushwacker