Showing posts with label scouting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scouting. Show all posts

Friday, 7 August 2009

Esplorazione For Beginners Pt6



As they say in french 'It' s toujours les grands grimpeurs qui meurent en absaling'

(Its always the great climbers who die abseiling - or it's a silly little mistake that causes disaster)

What was to be our last full day had started do well, we were taking so much exercise that we could feast on delicious fatty breakfasts and still be noticeably thinner by lunchtime. We'd done all of the lugging and carrying so we thought we'd do a little scouting in the morning, pop into the nearest town for supplies and a big lunch, a bit more scouting in the afternoon ending up at the bottom of the valley in time to fish the evening rise. Sounded so good didn't it?

We were on the hillside above the house when I heard the sounds which were to change our direction completely.
There was a series of dull thumps, like a big bag of spuds rolling down a stone staircase, and then the shouted

'BUSHWACKER I've broken my arm!!'

It wasn't the whiney 'oh oh aw aw i've broken my arm' of every day exaggeration, but the voice of stone cold certainty. When I got over to CHJ I could see that although not a medical man his diagnosis was spot on. His arm had an S bend in it and was dripping blood.

As we say in English 'BOLLOX!!'

I left him sitting on the path and went back to the house, gathered up everything I thought we'd need and we set off painfully slowly down the hillside. It must have only taken 10 minutes to get down to the car, seemed like ages.

As we drove cautiously up the track to the road CHJ's face was covered in the clammy sweat of a man burdened by pain. The road is made of potholes, we lurched in and out of them as slowly as we could. To make matter worse CMJ had to put up with my constant wisecracking and attempts to distract him.

Italian hospitals are really quite something; painted in a green that was never going to lift anyones spirits, each corridor came with it's own scowling bearded nun. The place was spotless, I kid you not i've eaten my dinner off things that weren't as clean as the floors in that place. One thing that I thought would lift CHJ's spirits was they had the prettiest nurses, but their shift had been meticulously timed to end as we arrived, so he had to rely on his natural stoicism.

It soon became clear that Italian hospitals were as cash-strapped as english hospitals, they just spend the money differently. His arm was re-set without anesthetic. Ouch.
I wasn't in the room but from the drinks machine at the other end of the corridor it sounded very painful. Double Ouch!

A very brave trooper, about to find out the horrific price of our flights home. Good job he's sitting down.

I certainly learned a few lessons in on the trip, but they'll have to wait for another post.
I'm in france for a few days grueling relaxation, back soon.
Your pal
SBW

PS Grueling Relaxation? WTF?
Kids, Parents and Ex Mrs SBW = grueling relaxation

SBW

Tuesday, 28 July 2009

Esplorazione For Beginners Pt5


Facilities were basic to say the least!


But the food was delicious!
This is a pecorino, but not as I'm used to eating it, in it's matured form. Here it's only a few months old. It made by our neighbor who was attacked by the wolf.

We saw plenty of signs that deer were feeding in the area, the dirt road in and out of the property was chris-crossed with tracks. Everywhere big enough and flat enough for cars to pass each other seemed to be a feeding station.
Your pal
SBW


Friday, 10 July 2009

Esplorazione For Beginners Pt4

The First morning dawned clear and bright, two minutes was all it took to gather these Cherries from a tree outside the door and life was sweet. Literally La Dolce Vita, the sweet life.

The mists over the hills cleared and the temperature rapidly rose to 24C, hot enough when every step forwards is also a step up. Looking out over the narrow valley i could see that ours wasn't the only super steep hillside. All the way along the valley the hillsides are so steep and heavily wooded that possible shots would either have to be either well inside 50 yards or you'd be shooting over to the next hillside at something over 500 yards. The internets army of whitetail hunters all advise finding the game trails but taking great care not to walk on them. On this terrain everything that has to walk is walking on the same slithers of land. Goats (domesticated), Boar, Deer and porcupines all share the available opportunities for perambulation.

During one of our many trips to the car to collect household goods we were invited to visit the nearest farm where through our broken Italian (OK broken is the wrong word - it implies that it worked at one time). We found out that the matriarch of the nearest farm had recently been forced to take refuge in a chicken coop as a wolf had shown up looking for a chicken ready meal, and finding the menu extended he thought he'd eat her from the specials board. Yikes!

The surprise news was that a Hydro Road had been cut through the bottom of the valley, basically a very big pipe has been buried under the road you can see above, it runs down hill to a building the size of a double garage, where a small plant generates the local electricity supply. I wanted to go to another local plant where they have guided tours, but as you'll see that wasn't to be.


More Soon
Your Pal
SBW

Wednesday, 1 July 2009

Esplorazione For Beginners Pt3


Here's the terrace outside the kitchen door which is the largest terrace on the farm. Not very big!
I found myself thinking of Pablo, as I tried my hand at a little wildlife photography. Not as easy as he makes it look.


More of the tale in the next few days.
Your Pal
The Bushwacker.

Monday, 29 June 2009

Esplorazione For Beginners Pt2


Finally, the kind of finally you only feel after thirty four hours in the car, we make it to the farm.
I want to tell you how steep the hillsides are, but steep just aint gonna do it, the hillside is at 45 degrees!
That's right, for every meter you go forward, you go up a meter. Brutal.

As the glassiers crawled eastwards their surfaces were split again and again as water rose by capillary action, then due to a changeable climate, chilled and expanded, just by 4%, but it was enough to chip off more of the main mass. These huge piles of rock slowly got covered in soil, trees grew, died and rotted. Trees grew, died and rotted. After a while the soil became super fertile. It was watered by the springs that forced water up through the bed rock before it diffused though the loose rocks. Sweet Chestnut trees that root deep and need a lot of water found a home and proliferated.

A couple of hundred years ago the demand for Chestnut flour was great enough to make it worth living up there. By Pollarding and coppicing the crop could be dramatically increased, by terracing the ground became a little more accessible and was protected form the worst of the storm erosion. The crop was harvested from the ground by hand. 'backbreaking' doesn't do it justice. It was a very hard life. No one wants to do it now.
The nuts were then stacked in special barns where fires burned for forty days and forty nights. Once the nuts were dehydrated they were taken first on foot and then by donkey, to a nearby mill to be ground into flour. All on ground that crumbles under your feet and is as steep as your roof.It was a very hard life. No one wants to do it now.

On one of the neighboring farms CHJ met a woman who could remember playing with the grandchildren of the last inhabitant of the farm some forty years ago. The winter snows, tumbling rocks, and ancient trees uprooted and cast aside by landslides have taken their toll on the hillside and the farm house.

More soon
SBW

Saturday, 27 June 2009

Esplorazione For Beginners Pt1


Well I've made it back in one piece, although sadly I must report that's more by luck than judgement.

A week ago I met up with CHJ in the south London suburbs and we drove to the coast, just in time to miss the boarding of the ferry, so after a delightful two hour nap on the quayside we go on board. Fortunately CMJ is a frequent traveler on this crossing and marched us strait to the only bit of the ship with couches big enough to sleep on and I didn't wake up until we were already docked in France.

France soon passed and we were treated to an insight into the Belgian plan for European supremacy. Not for them the subjugation of their neighbors by force or even economic might. No their plan is far more fiendish. They welcome you to their little country and all roads take you through their capital, a place where war and a town planning department staffed by Ferrari owners have left them with the strangest mix of architecture.
Once you're there, there you'll stay. There is no escape.
Signage to Brussels is everywhere, clues as to how to leave are non existent. Those fiendish Ferrari owners are so contemptuous of escape attempts that at a T junction they frequently present you with two opposite choices of direction to the same destination. Being six in the morning there were no locals in sight, just angry foreigners driving every more erratically in their desperation to leave. Brussels has become the capital of Europe, not through superior fire power, force of arms or political machination, but by holding visitors hostage on their labyrinth system of ring roads. After two hours in the vortex we did achieve escape velocity and had crossed belgium in less time than we'd spent trying to leave Brussels.

The first good omen of the trip was in Luxembourg, a small country that i could easily have passed through with out noticing.

Feeling a little weary and compelled by natures call. We pulled into a lay by and watched a succession of well dressed women announce their embarrassment by using a strangely exaggerated gait to cross the picnic area in search of the relative privacy of the forest. There is a great French tradition, (I'm using 'great' in it's sense of 'often' rather than 'fantastic') of littering the countryside with unburied toilet paper, fast food packaging, broken drinks bottles and the scat of truckers.

CHJ had elected to have a nap in the car so I took a wander away from the murderous looking truckers, and desperate holiday makers and found my self at the top of a scree looking out over a small marsh that abutted some planted pine forest. As I sat on the scree and scanning the forest's edge, I just 'knew' that I was in the vicinity of deer. I cant tell you how I knew but I was suddenly sure if I sat still a deer would show up. Amazingly it only took a few moments, sitting clam and still with my eyes holding a relaxed focus on the middle distance, before my peripheral vision flashed up a movement in the bushes. A Roe Deer with 6-8 inches of antler was making his way from bush to bush in search of some tasty tips. The whoosh of traffic didn't seem to spook him, the wind varied blowing towards me of across the space between us. He kept feeding. After about five minutes I lifted one butt cheek and farted. He Looked right at me, I held still. An expression of 'I'm sure I heard something' flashed across his face and he went back to nibbling. I thought of you dear reader, and in the light of his unspookability, I thought I'd get get the camera from the car and take a picture to show you. As soon as I stood and silhouetted he was off.

More Soon - stay tuned it gets better
Your pal
The Bushwacker

Wednesday, 10 June 2009

European Bowhunting

As the about me section for this blog says I'm going to turn myself into a bow weilding elk hunter I can't blame any of you who are tapping your fingers and demanding "enough of the kit collecting and distractions, get with the hunting already".

So in the interests of getting on with it I thought a review of the european options for the hunting toxophile would be in order. As you can see from the map, bowhunting is really starting to gain popularity in southern Europe, the summer before last the French hunting magazines all had bowhunting sections and CHJ has found severl Italian bowhunting sites. The European Bowhunting Association has some useful information, if you're thinking of making the trip.

I'm off to Italy in a few days to do some outdoor plumbing and some scouting for big pigs in a chestnut forest.

Frankly any pointers would be much appreciated

Your Pal
SBW