Trailkraft UK

We had a great time last weekend finding a short dry spell in the Lakes 🌄🏔️❄️🙌🏻🥰

While it’s been hard working in the snow locally, it was great to enjoy it for a change 😄🌀

Helvellyn Winter Walk -14 oC last-minute trip turned into a fun walk to the summit of a very cold Helvellyn 🌄🥶There isn’t many opportunities in winter to get a good clear day 🌄 and wh...

Winter Solstice

Our oldest known festival 🙌🏻🌄

We know we celebrated the solstice in antiquity 🌞

For example, there was a massive knees-up at Stone Henge in the Neolithic 😄

We have found the leftovers ☺️

We will never truly know what it meant to our ancestors, but we can infer from the archaeological findings and our own interpretations 🌀

To me it was, and is, a festival of death and rebirth, of the life journey itself 🙏🏻

We remember all those who no longer walk with us, and wish them well and let them know they are still loved 🥰

And we celebrate those who are still alive and the love they give and love we find in ourselves to give 🌞🌄

So happy Solstice all! 🤗

I hope you find time to celebrate and enjoy the festive season 🎄

https://youtu.be/J_03EXyhYS8?si=WDzvI5oR9I73EqbT

Great article 🤔 foraging teaches us sooo much about food and our relationship with the natural world 🌍

Literally you are what you eat 😊

Don’t let the men in suits convince you into unhealthy relationships with food 🥘 eat to be healthy and well, not unhealthy and ill 🥰🌀

Why can't we stop eating certain foods? - BBC "Something happened to our food in the mid-70s to make it irresistible to people." ...



This is a truly amazing groundbreaking discovery 😳

For a long time there has been speculation when fire was first made by humans and this puts the date way older that anyone else thought of before 🤔

I have used this technique and if you traul back through the page, you’ll see me doing this very thing with an inferior piece of pyrite, flint and some home-made Amadou 🤓

It took a while but was very satisfying, and convinced me that this was probably the first technique used to create fire on demand (as opposed to fire by friction) 🔥

I would argue, this has now become one of the most important archaeological sites in the world 😊

It’s got me fired up for the next fire craft video where we are going to look at ancient lighting techniques 🤗

Nice article by the BBC as well 👍🏻

The moment the earliest known human-made fire was uncovered - BBC News Archaeologists in the UK have discovered the world's oldest evidence of humans lighting fires

Wild camping above the snow line takes the right equipment, skill set, mindset and above all practice 😉❄️🏔️

It almost invariably contains what we call “the hard routine”. Moments of discomfort, cold, damp, things that we would, in normal life, think of as suffering. It just becomes part of the routine☺️

But then you wake up to the most stunning sunrise 🌄 You find yourself alone, just yourself to rely on, and yet in that solitude, the only person you’re responsible for is yourself, the errors and mistakes are yours, but so are the triumphs 🏔️🙌🏻

It was a rare treat to be alone on Scafell Pike Summit, on a sunny day, on a perfect morning in November 🤗 it’s not long before I was joined by others, who had ventured out to make the pilgrimage to the sun 🌞 it was great to speak to my fellow worshippers 🙌🏻😄

To have carried my world up the Mountain side, in the cold, wind, rain and hail, spend a night in its embrace, to awake to the sun rise equivalent of glimpsing heaven, was worth all the suffering and hardship, which after a few hours just became part of the routine… ⛺️🥶😄🙏🏻🌄🌀

Autumn as a transition season can produce great changes and I find great satisfaction and pleasure in witnessing and where possible joining in natures transformation- from collecting the final harvest of the year to watching the trees transform to the golden colours and transition to their sleeping winter state to the final crops of the garden and a few last cheeky climbs before the weather turns the rock a slimy wet 🍂 it started exceptionally warm, which gave some great opportunities to get out and enjoy the nature- one of the highlights was taking Cap for his first wild camp and finding ourselves in the middle of an active red deer rut roaring all around and allow me to enjoy one of my favourite autumn spectacles, which was unexpected 🦌 we cropped the final green tomatoes getting 2.7 kg and turning them into the most amazing chutney, which is still maturing in our cupboard 🫙 We continued to get to know a new girl, Alice and showing her the local woods 🐶 the last week has brought a massive change in the temperatures and the weather and a true first grasp of winter, lowering temperatures and reminding us of the season to come 🥶 ❄️ but one of the lasting memories of this autumn will be the stunning transformation of the trees and the long lasting golden colours of the leaves which now have mostly fallen, but this will join the great cycle and help produce the wonderful Green to come in the spring 🌳 🌱

I hope you’ve all managed to find some outdoors time in the autumn 🍁🍂🌀

Good call 🙌🏻🏔️🏕️🌀

It is an acquired taste 😄