The Wayfaring Path

Jamie pulls his Skoda over, next to a rough track blocked by a thin chain running between two trees.

“Hey mate, jump out proper quick will ya? I’ve got a few other things to do.”

I clamber out of the car, then drag my two packs and my bag of groceries free, and watch as he drives off down the country lane.

I’m here to join an unknown number of other people, and learn to make my own English flat bow. Either that or I’ve just been scammed out of 250 quid and left to starve in the forest, like some weird morality tale for kids.

I drag my gear over the chain and up the path, and thankfully I soon see a large marquee, over a small fire, and a lanky near-toothless geezer in a bucket hat and shades.

“Rich, mate, howzit?” he says, in a proper wide-boy Essex accent, “cuppa tea?”

Linda and I are doing a mix of different courses and workshops while we’re here in the UK, things that are difficult to learn back home. Bronze sword casting, archaeological finds processing, and this weekend, using bushcraft skills to make a bow. We’ve got a wee dream of hosting people in a rustic cabin in the backwoods, and then they can choose to learn any number of skills.

So I’m here, getting to know Rich, who’s here to learn the skills of his ancestors, to pass onto his grandkids. His upper teeth are missing as he pulled them with a pair of pliers during COVID, so I’m picking he’s a harder bastard than I am, and I’m wondering what other characters might be joining us. We’re under a parachute that has been made into a marquee, with the help of rough cut tree limbs and string. Rich is serving up PG Tips, as he’s not keen on Yorkshire tea, so no doubt we’re in for a few North vs South moments.

Jamie returns briefly, but without much more information on what’s happening next, so Rich and I make meals, chat into the evening, and retire to our tents. Well, Rich returns to his hammock, overhung by a small square of nylon. Yip, harder than me.

I start the next day with a two hour round trip to the nearest small town, as I realise I can’t survive on coffee bags alone. I skirt the edges of a posh hotel on my way back to camp, and get back in time to meet our other apprentice bowyers (bow makers). Two radiologists, two local-ish computer workers, and two cheeky lads from Newcastle. We stand awkwardly at first, as Jamie gives us our first instructions, and then it’s all axes, saws, pencils and tape measures. We randomly draw bow ‘staves’ from a pile, some of us getting Ash, others getting the more fantastically named Witch Hazel. 

The next three days are spent trying to remove just enough wood to allow our bows to bend, and not so much that they crack or split. Jamie offers just a little less than the minimum instruction required, and so we’re often left frustrated, but a collective good humour lifts us when we start to struggle. With a mix of backgrounds, from paddle making to construction, we help each other out, while our leader’s otherwise distracted. 

Health and Safety forces a work halt at 5pm, so then it’s time to cook and chat. There’s any number of great stories, all told in varying accents. 

After digesting the first night’s campfire meals, day two sees us searching out the promised dunny. Each of us edges between blackberry and holly, and eventually we find it. A wide pit in the earth, topped with a holed piece of plywood, mounted on three tree stumps. The plywood seat is set back around six inches beyond the edge of the hole, so we have to drop trousers, turn about, then do this awkward reverse jump, hopefully landing our bums in the appropriate hole. Bushcraft. We’ve been informed that the best way of getting rid of the toilet paper is to burn it in the fire. None of us is brave enough to carry our poop paper on a stick, to the communal cooking fire, then slip it beneath the boiling kettle.

In situations like this, poo stories start leeching forth. Surprisingly though, the conversation amongst nine lads in the woods are many and varied, and lean towards proper story swapping, healthy debates (where we get to agree to differ), and a lot of history lessons, especially for me, Jonny Foreigner.

There seems to be something about being in the woods, and around a fire, which allows each of us to share a little more freely than normal, so there’s truths told, vulnerabilities aired, and respect earned. There’s also a little too much technical detail on motorcycle upgrades, and a good dose of moaning about health and education systems (soz doctors), and a fairly charged talk about religion, on the one night the beer is flowing, but honestly, I dosed up on banter, especially from the lads from the North East. Two longtime mates who LOVED winding one another, and eventually everyone else up, but always with heart.

We had one truly fun side-mission, where four of us nipped out of camp to drive into town for beers and pizza. It felt like we were the naughty kids on a school camp, and the pint we sipped in the local pub as our curry pizzas were cooked, was the best I’d tasted in weeks. 

In amongst all this, bows gradually emerged, and were shaped, flexed and strung. We were just learning to make our own bow strings, when the rain started to come down, and suddenly camp was being disassembled, and we were all shaking hands, doffing caps, and heading away. 

There’s so much more to those four days, from the women up the way showing us how to make charcoal, to the monastery I found in the woods, but I don’t need to recite every moment. I’m stoked though, it felt like a proper adventure, and there’s something magical about adding a few people to an unfamiliar environment, giving them a  task, and a fire, and then seeing what happens. 

Linda’s off to the Holy Island shortly, for her first archaeological adventure. While she’s away, I’m heading down to the New Forest. Looking for more weird and wonderful characters, new skills to learn, and ideally bush toilets which don’t require a pants-down reverse run up to mount.