I’m a keen camper, but I’m certainly not as hardy as the likes of Ray Mears or Bear Grylls. I’m only ever interested in fair weather camping.
But a few of my tougher camping buddies were discussing what they would need, as a minimum, in order to spend a few nights outdoors at this time of year in the UK (its springtime and still very cold at night).
We concluded that the bare essentials would consist of shelter, somewhere warm to sleep and the means to create fire and find food and water. So this has resulted in a challenge for us to spend two nights and two days living and sleeping outdoors, in April.
We will take some tents, a cosy and warm sleeping bag each, a knife and some water, as well as warm clothes and stout footwear. But that is all.
We’re not allowing ourselves to take a lighter or matches, which will make it tough to start a fire and we will not be taking any food. So we’ll be trying to snare a rabbit or two, or maybe scraping some road-kill for a road-kill cook off.
This reminds me of a similar challenge that I undertook way back when I was a boy scout. On that occasion we had no tents so we had to build our own shelters as well as starting fires without lighters or matches. We started a fire using the friction method and built bivouacs using branches, leaves and straw. I recall that this was a lot of hard work, but we did it.
Without doubt, the most useful item that we took with us that time was our knives. This is the one key survival essential that Bear Grylls always has with him when he’s dropped into the wilderness. Equipped with a well made knife you’re able to cut wood for fire or a shelter. You can skin and prepare a rabbit for cooking and make the snare needed to trap the rabbit in the first place.
So I hope that you will wish me luck on my forthcoming survival challenge weekend. But I shall definitely be taking my mobile phone so if we don’t have any luck with rabbits or road kill I’ll be able to call for a pizza!
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