19.07.14 Thornden/Blean Woods

 I had arranged to take a young person to the woods for a Bushcraft activity, we had spoken about this upon occasion through the week.
When we left the house to go we stopped off and purchased some bits for the activity, we shopped to a budget for lunch, on the trip there we spoke about the plans and what particular activities she would like to do.
We arrived and went in a different direction than usual finding a place to stop after walking for a while, I showed the young person several navigational methods as we walked and explored the new area, when we stopped we made a drink and I showed them how to make a bracelet out of grass, they struggled to get the hang of it put persevered for about an hour before I suggested that we try this again some other time, and gave them the one I had made, we had some lunch of Noodles, Pancetta and Onion, before packing up and attempting to find out way back to the car we followed the track most of the way using a reverse of the story we had created whilst walking in but then lost direction as we did not start the story until we were quite a way in to start with so I explained some other natural navigation techniques we could use, pointing out were the sound of the road was this meant that we knew roughly which way to travel and we also knew that at some point we would come across a larger track that would lead us back to the car, I cut a walking stick for the young person and we followed this method taking us back in short order.
 Once back we went to a part of the woodland that we thought we knew and found it had recently been changed to a sensory walk with carvings and things in the woodland so we followed these stopping for another drink, I taught the young person how to make a fire using flint and steel, again they found this difficult but managed it eventually blowing a bundle of dry grass into flame, that we put out immediately as it has been so dry, we were using a Trangia to cook with rather than an open fire.
On the way home we spoke about what we had leant that day, covering natural navigation, tree identification and some uses for them, cooking, how to budget for shopping etc, planning for different eventualities, and even finishing the day with clearing away and the next plan in mind, with all this being covered in how we had planned the day and may even be able to help their future.