Figure 0.0 : Norfolk coastline.
There are number of different titles covering this topic area: woodcraft, bushcraft, survival, scouting etc, all having a slightly different emphasis but also a lot of material in common. Personally, I like the term woodcraft as it sums up the environments I like the best, working with wood, carving etc. The website’s title combines this with wandering, travelling without any clear destination or purpose, the way I like to walk. Why pursue this interest, pure selfish indulgence, finally accomplishing all those tasks that eluded me as a child e.g. trying to make fire using a flint and an old file, or rubbing two sticks together etc. What drives my interest is the sense of achievement in accomplishing these tasks, trying, questioning and mastering the techniques involved, but perhaps most importantly just enjoying the outdoors, finding and understanding small details that go unnoticed by others.
Figure 0.1 : Norfolk dunes.
I’ve started this website as a means of sharing my experiences of woodcraft. As a child I always had an interest in nature and the country side, growing up on the east coast of Norfolk, figure 0.0. Mostly dunes (marram grass and heather), scrub and woodland (willow, birch and oak), inhabited by rabbits, adders, natterjack toads and sand lizards. I’m definitely a novice when it comes to woodcraft skills, but, that’s the point of this web page, to provide a record of the things that work for me and perhaps to try and fill in some of those frustrating, missing steps not mentioned in the books on this subject. The sections in this website are in order of significance, however, this is highly dependent on environment and circumstances e.g. a person can’t last more than a few days without water, however, fire is needed to purify water and without a knife its difficult to produce fire. Alternatively, without shelter or fire the effects of hypothermia may be more of an immediate danger than lack of water. Therefore, the first three sections are equally significant. Tip, any undertaking should be based on experience and knowledge of the tasks involved and a real assessment of the risks and levels of physical fitness, skills required. I would like to thank the Woodsmoke and Woodlore instructors and the people I’ve meet on my travels as without their input and guidance this website would not be possible.
Figure 0.2 : Norfolk dunes.
Note: I’ve decided to divide the webpage content into public and private sections to avoid possible copyright conflicts associated with attached documents and images. Therefore, some parts of this website can only be accessed from the local machine. Next to each embedded document I’ve added a clickable (link), if I was able to find the original source URL this is marked as (link) otherwise it is marked as (link). To improve webpage download times, larger pages have been divided into subsections. Contact email: info@woodcraftwanderings.org.
Update: Due to disk quota and bandwidth limitations I’ve had to move the larger images to the private section, therefore, some photos on this website can only be accessed from the local machine. Note, due to some high traffic links to some of the images on this website ive added a random number index to the image directory to try and reduce my bandwidth usage.
Update: Due to disk quota and bandwidth limitations I’ve now had to move all images to PhotoBucket.
Table of contentsUpdated - Date : 25-09-10 : Change_Log