I have a pretty good excuse for not getting much boat building done last week-end and I make no apologies for the unabashed name dropping here. Every year Ordnance Survey give away free maps to every 11 year old school kid in the country, 750,000 per year, since you're asking, we've just passed the 5 million mark. There's a competition the kids can enter and the prize this year was a day out in the woods with Ray Mears. I've played a small part in getting all those maps out so I get the chance to accompany /supervise them on the trip. So off we go tramping through the woods learning how to navigate and light fires, cook squirrels and hunt down bigfoot etc etc. Great Fun.
Ray is of course a boat builder par excellence, famous for his birch bark canoes, so deserves his place on this blog. He is also a very very nice man and can light a fire with a snap of his fingers.
The kids were taught all sorts of useful things about woodcraft and how not to get lost in the woods. They were all given a flint fire starter, taught how to light a fire using birch bark as tinder, boiled a billycan of water straight out of the stream and made a hot drink to wash down their sarnies, brilliant and not a mobile phone in sight! I know the kids had a great time, so did I!
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