Bivi

We set off yesterday afternoon for another adventure with our canoe.  This time we packed up stuff to stay out the night so we needed more food.  After all the cooking I did on Friday (dinner and tea) I was struggling to come up with a meal that we could take to cook in the evening and in the end decided to leave it until the morning, I was cooked out.  I got up in the morning and looked in the fridge, broad beans, a small amount of ricotta and feta left over from another meal where jumping at me to go together.  I cooked some potatoes, chucked in the broad beans at the end mashed them together with the cheeses and some chopped mint added some rice flour to bind it all a bit, hey presto small patties.  I sorted out some lunch, wraps and salad (left overs from day before), snacks and breakfast fruity porridge and we were ready for the off.

We went to another lake a bit further from us, we arrived in time for lunch which we ate before packing the canoe and setting off.  The wind was fairly strong and heading down the lake, the direction we ultimately wanted to travel we decided to head up the lake against the wind for a bit of an explore first.  When we turned to head in the other direction the wind changed to (that was to become a bit of theme for the rest of the day).  We stopped at a small beach for a drink and a snack, we boiled water with the Kelly Kettle, the children had great fun playing in a stream, building a dam and redirecting the flow.

We headed on down the lake pass the beach we were planning to camp on to a wonderful little island.  Those of you familiar with Swallow and Amazons may recognise this part of the island, from chapter four of the book.  The picture is titled feeling their way in.  

The island was really busy so we just had a shorter explore before heading back up the lake.  

As we were heading down towards the island we were having to paddle hard against the wind we were looking forward to a speedy sail back up the lake. No, the wind had other ideas, it had dropped and changed direction.  We managed to get a bit of assistance as it was vaguely in the right direction. My eldest asked the question on the way back, why is the island there?  We told him it was due to the ice age.  He immediately realised that it was harder rock that the glacier could not wear away.  We have talked about the ice age before when out and about and watched a few DVDs on the subject. The island is a roche moutonnée.

We made it to the beach and started to get a big pile of sticks together to cook tea.  

 
We had used the kelly kettle to reheat tea when out canoeing earlier in the week, this time we had food that needed cooking. We ended up eating in stages, first we cooked and my husband and children ate meat burgers with tabbouleh, we had started cooking potatoes first and left them sitting in hot water which were cooking very slowly they went back on the heat until eventually they were ready to eat.  Then we cooked the patties I had made in the morning.  It was a bit slow but all very tasty and we had not had to bring any fuel with us.

The children had great fun during all this time running here and there, in the lake, in the woods nearby and playing in a stream that flowed down one side of the beach.  They created channels and pool and dams.  We boiled some water for a cup of tea after eating, I took the Kelly kettle off the heat  once it had boiled and felt my hand get hot but thought nothing of it.  Within a minute I realised I had burned it so put my hand in the stream.  I spent most of the next hour with it in the stream, whilst assisting with the hydrology engineering with my children, it hurt a lot.  It was great to listen to them talking about the effect of their engineering on the flow of the stream geography in the field, bit of theme going here no prior planning of course!

My husband built the bivi with a tarp and the canoe and used the embers from the Kelly kettle to build a fire. 

 We sat by the fire until it was dark and went to bed.  I was woken at 5am as my youngest had migrated, she had managed to get past her brother to her daddy!  It was very windy, as I went back to sleep I hoped it would calm down as we would have fun getting back to the car against it.

By 8am the wind had dropped and the sun come out.

My husband was up and had the fire going for a brew.

What more could you ask for?  We had our porridge, packed up and headed back to the car.  We were once again paddling against the wind.   A wonderful twenty four hours.