peds

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll track that down. Sounds like a very entertaining read. Friends of mine have gone exploratory skiing up in Baffin. That place is off the hook, yo.

A pipe dream of mine, one day in the future, if the future allows, is to get a winterised boat, probably steel hull, with a wood stove and loads of insulation, and sail north to Iceland, eastern Greenland, and the tiny little speck a few hundred km north-east of Iceland, Jan Mayen Island, and do some ski touring right off the deck of the boat. It's got a volcano, a scientific research station, and naff all else. Heaven. A man can dream.

That's it yeah, tiny dried fish, peanuts, crispy peas, broad beans, and little shreds of nori seaweed.

Well, you can keep your Circue du Soleil and your caramel latté, I'll be off in a cave somewhere eating wild carrots and seal pemmican while learning the lyre.

Absolutely, get rid of the tree, stump removal is hella optional. Birch stump makes a great nursery for all sorts, and can be a beautiful centrepiece with the right sort of planting. Live fast die young, birch trees do it well.

It's horses for courses of course, but I'd be happy enough doing this if forced to.

When I lived in Chamonix I used to go skiing with a mountain guide who then moved to Greenland. He spends his time guiding exploratory ski trips, fishing, kayaking, dog sledding. Absolutely freaking idyllic. I'd choose Greenland over most other countries on the planet, Gaza and California included.

Ah, you're thinking of hawthornless. Different tree.

Definitely leave a few patches, as big as you can stand, where you do absolutely nothing and let nature take its course... if you can spare the space... but you also want to use and enjoy your woodland, which is fine. There's space for you and nature both. Walk around the woodland and choose a few of the biggest, nicest looking trees of the best species to you (might be pure native, might be a few foreigners that you particularly enjoy... only you can answer this question) and thin out any nearby skinny ones to give them the most room to breathe. Don't be scared to really open up some areas and raze everything to the ground... forests love a bit of sunlight to hit the floor every now and then, opening up a clearing provides the opportunity for new growth. It's a drastic change, but that's part of the natural cycle of things in a woodland. If you can spare any of the good trees, think about knocking over a few of them and leaving them as untouched as you can... whole trunks or collapsed crowns offer a different kind of habitat to stacked logs or brash piles. Start with that and see what kind of volume of firewood you get stacked up, and try to compare it to how much you use over a year... On top of that, definitely think about planting somewhere to specifically coppice for firewood and materials, it'll be more productive spacewise than harvesting firewood purely from the established woodland, you won't feel as pressed to do so, and you'll be able to dedicate more of the woodland space to nature... if that's what you'd like to do. That said, 3 acres should definitely sort your own personal firewood needs easily enough, unless you are trying to heat a 300m² barn with no insulation, 24/7... in which case, invest in some insulation!

There's two sides to every story all right!

Mad, innit. I keep trying to think of ways to implement remote working for myself, but it doesn't really work. I can't find a slot big enough on the laptop for even the pruning saw. Five days in Nice... it's interesting to see new places, but I think 5 days in Nice and Monaco would be more than enough for me. I spent a few days there once taking on provisions for a yacht delivery across the Med, we couldn't sail out of the place fast enough. Two big local dishes, pissaladiere, a pizza base topped with caramelised onions, anchovies, and black olives, absolutely freaking delicious, and socca, a dry, tasteless, crumbly pancake made of chickpea flour, topped with... salt. Most pointless f*cking food ever.

Before Christmas I took the tops off a load of hawthorn from someone's lapsed hedge, lovely straight bits a couple of metres long... took them away on the trailer instead of hiding them on-site... they'll be perfect for making a few shillelaghs, a combination walking stick/fighting club... and the offcuts will be going straight onto the "Sunday best" firewood pile.

Where in France is he?

I try my hardest to stay out of this thread, but really... this photo is just too good to not share. There's an obvious Xzibit "yo dawg" meme about dumpster fires for anyone who cares to imagine it too, out there on the Internet.

No, you wouldn't! We use a zero stretch 6mm aramid cord for building anchors (mountain rescue, not arb), it's a great bit of kit but has to be used cleverly or you'll have a bad time. Might add a length of Squire to my wishlist then, it's good to share the load on some bits of kit anyway to extend the service life of both old and new.

I'm the same, I can't do the first alarm. Second or third, minimum, for me. My wife hates it. Got a call from a guy I sub for yesterday, I'm being dragged away from my week off a day early... I'm back to work tomorrow instead of Monday. Oversize leylandii has collapsed onto someone's stately home, needs helping down to the ground. I don't mind, it's been a lazy enough two weeks. Have a good one!

Understood, thanks for that. Yeah, too much bounce if weighting and unweighting could be annoying all right. It's not been an issue so far because I've nothing to compare it to, you see! I'll keep my eyes open for something more static.

Honestly, flipping terrifying. We went to a bear sanctuary a few days afterwards, there was a treetop walkway and a central lookout building with big glass windows for easy observation, big scratching posts up against the glass to encourage the bears to stretch out nice and tall for our titillation... and a tape measure with corresponding weights marked against the heights. They had some big chonky fellas there, a couple over 600kg... it's just not a fight you'd win. I'd confidently say the tiny one I saw out in the wild was only about 400kg, but that was big enough for me at the time!

Ah, I bite mine, they wouldn't be worth the effort.

I only keep it long so it's more believable on the odd occasion I wear a dress.

You're just jealous of my luscious locks.

I could have sworn I'd mentioned it on here before, but I can't find any mention of it in my post history. The whole encounter was short and sweet, but it is burned indelibly into my mind, and at the time, was the most terrified I'd been in my entire life up to that point, by a significant margin. Well, my ex-girlfriend (now wife) and I were on our last big trip away before the kids came along, we were driving around Hokkaido in a campervan for a month. We'd camped in the Shiretoko peninsula national park overnight, and I'd planned to trail run the traverse of all the peaks, about 8 of them over 40km or so I think, while my pregnant wife enjoyed her morning sickness and drove the van to the next volcanic natural hot tub we'd be camping at. It was a hard life, back when we were young and cool. So I was making my way up the first climb of the day, the path winding along straight up the ridgeline to the summit, and hemmed in on either side by a dense wall of rhododendron. As I round a corner, I catch a glimpse of fluffy round ears and flaring nostrils at the end of a long brown snout, no more than ten metres away. Before I've even had a chance to leak a terrified whimper, the sudden deafening noise made by four hundred kilograms of muscle and claw charging through dense forest fills the air, and I realise, gratefully, that it's heading away from me. The thunder and rumble quickly fades to silence, and I stand rooted to the spot for quite a few minutes, shaking my bear bell forcefully at the end of an outstretched arm, its braided string woven between white-knuckled fingers like prayer beads. The stench of it hangs in the air... rotten meat, overpowering, unbearable. I'm a split second away from turning around and heading back to the campervan, as I've only been gone twenty minutes, but I pull myself together and set off up the hill again, tinkling my little bell and singing loudly, as the guidelines suggest you do. Ten minutes later I come across an unbelievably huge pile of shit, belonging to either an incredibly fat man with a remarkably varied diet, or to a brown bear. I hover my hand over it to see if it's still warm, and I can't help but poke through it a little with a stick to check it for bear bells. Seven hours, zero minutes, and one bear after setting off that morning, I run down to where Aine has moved the campervan and I've finished the unexpectedly-rugged traverse of the Shiretoko national park, taking in all of the major peaks on the wild and isolated Shiretoko peninsula in north east Hokkaido. Sliced-open by impenetrable undergrowth, battered and bruised by falling scree and stone, mosquito-chewed but thankfully nothing bigger, there's only one thing for it: time for a hot bath and a cold beer in yet another volcanically-heated rock pool in the woods. Thanks, bears, for not eating me. Found these pictures lurking at the back of my old social media presence... The terrain More terrain The ridgeline yonder, behind my head, to the first summit of the day. The bear was by my left ear. Quite nice, this Japanese trail mix The toxic work culture in Japan is fuelled in part by all sorts of particularly unpleasant energy drinks, like this one, which was probably equivalent to 3 Red Bulls, but in a much smaller package. Great for trail running too. Route continues along the ridgeline yonder. The bear survival finish line, letting it all hang out in yet another naturally heated sulphurous hot tub with a stream-chilled Asahi beer. Those were the days.

I've only ever owned one climbing rope (for trees at least, I've had all sorts for rock) it was on offer when I bought it which was the only deciding factor. How does the New England Tachyon 11.1mm stand in the grand scheme of things? Still got a bit of life left in it, but the spliced end is getting a bit tatty and the other end has been trimmed a bit. What could I upgrade to if I stumble on a decent deal?

Happy new year everyone, hope the first day of the year gets you off to a good start.

Infinitely stackable, too. I only have 2 and a lid, and I've probably only ever used it twice, but you can stack them a dozen high on the same pan. Maximum dumplings.