This year my old bike, Feisty, an Aprilia Pegaso 650, went past the MOT deadline and I was stuck looking for parts. I decided to sell her because she spent far more time in the garage (or in bits) than she did on the road. I needed something more reliable and, when my friend […]

Is Spring really here? The landscape says yes:   but the weather says no. It’s May and we’re still getting subzero temperatures at night and the occasional snow storm. Regardless, I put out my old trail cam in a much deeper part of the forest (about a 90 minute trip there and back) with the […]

Yesterday, we visited my sister-in-law to combine my name day and her birthday. In reality it was because the kids wanted to see their cousin’s new dog – a 5-month-old Czechoslovak Wolfdog named Jacky. For those who don’t know, a Wolfdog is a cross between a German Shepherd and a Carpathian Wolf. They’re a bit […]

We get plastic Irish pubs out here but they don’t even know it’s St Patrick’s Day and I don’t fancy sitting in a half-empty overpriced establishment watching Rhianna on a widescreen…. I miss the days when there were queues to get into a pub on St Paddy’s Day and it involved lots of drinking, poon, […]

Ok, so I was wrong about it being the end of Winter. The temperature does climb a little above zero during the day (3 degrees centigrade feels tropical) but then it plummets to minus 10 at night, which means that everything that’s melt becomes ice. Walking is a nightmare as the ground, pavement and roads […]

Months of snow and ice and now the melt begins. Temperatures are finally hovering above zero, which means endless slush and dense, dense fog akin to the pea soupers of Victorian London. Creepy but cool. Already, thoughts have turned to the tasks awaiting in Spring, and this year will be scary as we’re unsure what […]

I’d completely forgotten to post this – Bushcraft Magazine‘s Summer Issue features a couple of pieces by me. There’s a how-to-make a Valaska, a Carpathian shepherd’s walking axe, and another true forest horror story. Order a copy or, better yet, subscribe for a year’s worth. It’s the best magazine on the subject out there.

It always takes me a while to re-adjust to living in the “back of beyond” (as my friend Dominic calls it) after returning from the UK. The best way, I find, is to spend as much time at the house as possible and go out every day into the forest, or for long country walks, […]

Wow! What a cool little adventure. In the last couple of weeks my kids have slept in a hotel, a converted stables/barn, a tent, a hammock, a modern detached house and a ship’s cabin. They’ve eaten in restaurants, in the kitchen of a 400 year old thatch-roof farmhouse, on a patio, in fast food joints, […]

After a bout of moaning, winging and complaining that I always cut her head off in photos when she models clothes for me, I decided to give my long-enduring wife her own blog post. This is a beautiful meadow we chanced upon by accident in the hills outside the village after unsuccessfully hunting for mushroom […]