Easter Day the store is closed so I have the day off. 
I had planned to take Dolly out yesterday but I did some overtime instead. With three expensive kickstarters all finishing within a month I needed the money.

So today I was really determined to go out somewhere with Dolly. I even prepared the bags the evening before.

I didn’t have a destination in mind as I threw stuff into the bag. But as I woke up I knew I wanted to avoid bank holiday honey spots. Which meant the coast was out, as was Roydon Common. I wanted to get away from the crowds and find somewhere Dolly and I could just chill.

The plan was to go to the woods near to Roydon Common, Whitehills Wood. 
It’s actually a bigger wider wood than that at Roydon Common. On paper easier to go off path to find that quiet spot.

The parking spot for the woods isn’t sign posted at all. It comes up on you suddenly. Which means the cars behind you are getting little notice you are about to slow down very quickly. It doesn’t help that the entrance to the car park is very pothole ridden. Making for a very bumpy stop! 
The woods themselves is a mixture of coniferous trees (the majority) and deciduous trees. There are also a lot of rhododendrons amongst the trees. Which provide some nice cover deeper into the woods to do bushcrafty stuff, or just chill.

Dolly and I followed the main path that we found out was not going to take us anywhere close to the pond shown on the os map.

We were going to have to go off path to find the pond.

It also turns out the main path also missed out a chunk of the woods. Undiscovered woods to discover at a later date.

Not long after going off path along a deer track I saw what looked like a small wooden door in an embankment.
Ignoring all the lessons learnt from watching numerous eighties slasher flicks, such as (the classic Friday the 13th, and Halloween series of movies) Dolly went to investigate.

With the moss well established this had been here a while.
As I got closer I thought maybe this was some bushcraft underground shelter.
Lifting the door open to see inside there wasn’t much space inside. 
If this was a shelter it was for a very small person. I’d say it was at most three feet deep, by what two feet? 
Things got more mysterious when I found a hole going down into the “shelter”. It didn’t go straight into it but curved at the bottom going into the back of the “shelter”. Was this a chimney? Was this some sort of bushcraft oven?

After the brief exploration of the mysterious “shelter” we continued on following the deer path hopefully to water.

Instead of finding water we found what looked like some eco vandals aka bushcrafters had been building shelters and making fire.

I decided to use this as good as any spot to stop and have our lunch.

Todays lunch was cooked on my BushBuddy.

Yes that is a Fire-Maple Dandelion Buddy Camping Table in the picture below. You will also notice titanium chopsticks (yes I’m that guy) plus a folding chef knife from Hector Knives. I obviously used the knife to slice up the salami. Naturally Dolly and I had to taste test the salami as I was slicing it.

I started the fire using the BCB ferro rod with paper thin birch bark. None of the wood burnt was from these woods. In fact it was kindling I bought at a garage. 

The ingredients I took were the following:

• ramen noodles
• freeze dried garden peas
• freeze dried sweet corn
• freeze dried carrots
• two dried shitaki mushrooms broken up
• Two piccanti fine cut spicy salami sliced up
• packet of soy sauce
• chicken oxo cube
• packet of Furikake seasoning
• water

I basically put everything but the soy sauce and Furikake seasoning in the pot, bought to the boil. I’d like to say I them simmered it but that would imply I had some sort of control over the heat!
Once everything was cooked and rehydrated and I was ready to eat, I then stirred in the soy sauce and sprinkled on the Furikake seasoning.

I have to say this was pretty tasty. I did not share this with Dolly.

After having a drink of squash I packed up leaving no trace we’d been there.

We then retraced our steps back to the path and continued our circuit back to the car.

This was a very nice woodland walk. It felt like a woods where you could get lost exploring its depths. Something missing when you walk round the Roydon Common woods. It’s too thin.