Dartmoor 3.

[Scythe13]

I have to be honest, I am not sure if this is our 3rd or 4th meet. I think it's the 4th, but I wasn't able to make it to the 3rd one. So I may have lied. But it's my 3rd Dartmoor meet, so we'll call it Dart3.

Well, this was quite an experience.

First off, checking directions on your phone, then leaving the phone at home...not quite ideal. Leaving the map at home, then having to drive back and forth up and down a road from the near by town to one of the tors and back, about 4 times...even less ideal. But after the lovely woman by the tor gave me directions to within 500 meters of the turning, the journey to the site was much simpler. Well, simpler-ish.

At arrival, I figured I was about an hour and a half early, so figured I would just let everyone at the site deal with the fact that a random guy had turned up and was waiting for his mates to come later. It made sense to me at the time, but a few moments later, when I realised I was actually the last to turn up, and everyone else was there hours before me...well, fashionably late as usual.

I quickly parked up and noticed a guy walking towards me. I got ready for the sentence "Who the F**K are you?"

Much to my surprise the guy looked me up and down, turned to the archery area and called out "No, he's not in shorts." As it was, MCavity and everyone else was there and said some guy, probably in shorts, was still to turn up.

We quickly set up camp for the night. Okay, I may have lied again. Everyone else quickly set up camp. I opted to go right back to basics and build my own accommodation for the night. Debris shelter anyone?

It was at this moment that I realised everyone wanted to try my lovely 1.5million scoville chilli sauce. Well, it turns out I was right and wrong at the same time. Yes they all wanted to try it. No they didn't want to try a second serving. Technically speaking, they didn't want to try the first serving, they just didn't realise that it was a bad idea at that time.

BeardyMan cracked open his first (2nd or 3rd...need clarification please BM) alcoholic drink of the day, to quench the third and pain from the sauce. Once the pain had subsided, on with building the camp.

After about 10-15 minutes BeardyMan has set up his hammock and tarp, MCavity and TheFalcon had their tents nicely pitched, and MCavity's friend (I think nephew) had his tent nicely positioned...on 3 boxing glove sized rocks. This was not intentional, there was a lot of leaf litter, and I can but assume he figured it would be good padding for the night.

While everyone else got back to archery, alcohol, or something else beginning with the letter A, I went through the basics of how to build a debris hut with TheFalcon.

Over the time of construction (about 5 hours) I had gone through this method of construction and the principles therein with all of the guys present at the camp. I would have had the whole thing completed much faster if the are we were in wasn't up in a corner, with little to no leaf litter in, meaning all debris had to be transported 25 meters to the site of construction. It wasn't until later that I found an area with about a foot of debris all round for a damn big area! Murphy's Law in action. Learned from that mistake. Lesson: Don't follow the crowd.

Before everyone turned in for the night we gathered around the camp fire. It was only 5:30pm and it was pretty dark. We were around the fire chatting away with other people in the camp, BM's friends from the Bushcraft Forum, and a few others. Everyone was having fun, drinking, chatting, and swapping stories.

A short while later, time for snooze. So we retired to our camp. I saw WE, I mean everyone except BeardyMan, whom was last seen cupping his [insert double figure number ending in TEEN] drink.

Night night snoozy time.

The time was 6am, and I was rising after a damn good night's sleep. I did my usual wake up for a pee trick, and managed to un-debris the front 3 inches of my shelter, but no biggie. As far as I knew, everyone had slept like a log.

So far nobody else was stirring, so I got out my iPod and got to a bit of Monopoly! I am proud to say that I won 2 games out of 2. Capitalism all the way haha.

As the sound of zips being drawn back began to echo, like the morning chorus from Carry On Camping, I realised it was probably safe to venture out. This was a success on so many levels. Firstly, none of us got attacked by a fox! The fact a few campers had dogs near by may have helped with that. Also the terrifying sound of some random beast growling in the night (turned out to be MCavity snoring) that I heard when I went for a pee, was probably something to do with it.

We gathered around the fire pit again and the usual camp conversations and questions came out. "How did you sleep?", "Do you know what temp it got down to last night?", "Did anyone else have 3 bloody big rocks under their tent?" and other usual questions.

As we headed over to the main fire area, where certain people were still asleep by the fire, and as MCavity was doing his Delia Smith impression on the gas hob, we all started to wonder the same thing. Where was BeardyMan?

A little bit of Sherlock Holmes deduction, and the many empty bottles around the camp fire, led us to believe that BM had drunk a bit too much. Moments later when a wee bottle was found outside of BM's steamy windowed truck, we reassessed his situation from 'a bit too much' to MUCH TOO MUCH! No more shall be said about this...ever!

The day's following activites saw us setting off on a walk to one of the tors. While we are about 300 meters from the site, along came MikeA F-ing and Blinding at his satnav. It hadn't taken him 24 hours to find the site. He had an impromptu party to get to. So he goes back to the site, then runs to catch up with us. There may have been comments about his run looking like a gay-military version of Baywatch, but let's not tell him that....oh wait... Anyway, while on the walk we came across flashing lights and a red helicopter. It ended up as a woman had a 'funny spell' on the tor and was airlifted out. That meant we couldn't afford to have any funny spells ourselves, because the chopped was heading in the wrong direction to pick us up.

The walk was fantastic fun and we all had a bit of an adventure seeing the area and watching MCavity chase cows away...he's my hero (no joke, I hate cows because I was chased by them as a kid). Having said that, one of those cows did have a mean look in it's eye!

After that, we got back and MCavity's nephew had thickened the debris shelter and extended it out more. He'd done a damn good job. As it was, he was more inclined to sleep in a pile of twigs and leaves than he was to sleep in his rock-infested tent again. Another convert to bushcraft!

Come 4pm, I had to disappear off like Cinderella at the ball, before I turned into a pumpkin...and missed the wife's work-Christmas-do. Thankfully I made it back in time.

One thing I want to comment, before I hand over to one of the other guys, and before everyone else uploads their photos, I learned that it's VERY DIFFERENT shooting a bow with a site and without one!!! DAMN, was that ever a hell of a lesson to learn!!!