The camping platform
We've always just slept on the ground when we've camped, but this year we're putting in an upgrade..
Behold, a massive pile of milled larch. I’ve been waiting on this delivery for a couple of months. The delay hasn’t been a bad thing either, as I’ve been plenty busy at tree school racking up NPTC qualifications. This week the planets aligned and I was able to arrange delivery of this order into the woodland. The heavens also opened and we had non-stop, drenching rain pouring down on us throughout the entire day.
Here’s a little map of where the woodland sits on planet Earth. The orange circles represent the entrance to the woodland through a big locked gate, which then goes into a nice bumpy track that comes to the end with another gate. After the gate the track turns right and cuts through the centre of the woodland. Very few places will deliver into the woodland, most will just leave it at the very top next to the big locked gate. The total distance between those two orange circles is 1.5km.
There’s no way I’d be able to transport this much wood down that track without a vehicle capable of towing stuff (don’t have one) in a trailer that I don’t have. Hence, this project was only made possible by the fact that this sawmill would very kindly deliver into the woodland. Some Northumberland folk are still made of stern stuff it would appear.
Once at the top of the woodland, it all had to be carried by hand. I enlisted the help of a treeschool class mate, Dan, whom I knew to not be deterred by physical or mental challenges. The line in black is the route from the delivery area to the camp where the platform is to be built. The track is about 200m in length, making the journey a 400m round trip.
After three solid hours of work, we had moved all the wood into the camp.
There was about 120 three metre lengths of wood. 80 boards and the rest a mixture of posts and joists. We carried three boards at a time or one large joist or two small joists. Back of envelope calculations shows that we likely made about 26 trips for the boards and about 20 trips for the joists. That’s about 46 trips in total and Dan and myself shared the work equally. So that’s 23 400m trips each. In total, as a complete guestimate, we each walked 9.2 kilometres, of which half was loaded with between 15 & 20kg.
It was nearly all carried on our shoulders using a garden kneeling pad for comfort. I had one in the boot of my car which I axed in half. We stuffed it into our shirts. Here you can see myself and Dan proudly standing next to our days work. Dan removed his pad before the photo was taken. I left mine. The stance I am pulling is because the camera was on a three second timer and I struggled to get into the shot in time.
Dan was a legend on this day. He didn’t baulk at the non-stop rain and not once did he complain about being wet - a total legend. By the end of the day we were exhausted, covered in wet larch sawdust, soaked to the bone and completely drained.
I must say though, once you’re wet, you’re wet. If you don’t dwell on it, and assuming you’re not in a freezing wind or experiencing chaffing, it is not that bad a set of conditions to do manual work in. The rain certainly kept the flies at bay and amazingly I managed to get through the entire day without getting bitten by anything.
The camping platform is going to be the main area of focus for me once I’m done with my final NPTC ticket for first year. So expect a video series of that being built.