Firewood gathering with the Fat BOB trailer...

Alpacas at Belhaven Bay...


After a lot of heavy rain and the river Tyne in spate a lot of wood has been washed into the estuary at John Muir Park, I went down with the Fat BOB trailer to see if any decent logs were for the picking...

And there were several felled logs ideal size for lifting...

4 loads around the tide line then out to Sandy Hirst Point and there was less here then expected but no matter i picked up two good logs here...

One more log spotted on the salt marsh on the return and that would do...

Back home and soon had them sawed then split...

A month or so airing in the log shed and these will be ok to burn, a productive day...

Wee film, song is `Two Rights Make One Wrong` by Mogwai

Fat BOB Trailer; Firewood Gathering; JMP Nov 2019 from coastkid71 on Vimeo.

More soon...

Return of the FatBOB Trailer!...

Been a while since i used the Fat BOB trailer to haul hardwood logs washed into John Muir Park from the river Tyne.  You can read Here... how i modded the trailer to take a fat wheel,
With the new van picked up on Friday after work, and a cordless battery operated chainsaw i am all geared up for harvesting firewood on the coast...

Saturday morning and paid my £2 to park and  enjoyed a quiet coastline with just the odd runner and dog walker...

More erosion here...

With in 2 hours or so i had ran 6 loads of logs,  some the right size for trailer, some i sawed up and had a good load in the van...

Here is some film i shot with the Go Pro,
Song is `Party in the Dark` by Mogwai...


Fatbike &  FatBOB Trailer; Hauling Firewood, Sept 17 from coastkid71 on Vimeo.

More soon...

Norwegian Wood, a book by Lars Mytting

I was given this amazing book for my Christmas from my Big bro and O, what a great read on firewood, how to cut it and stack it and dry it. It may be focused around Scandinavia but the principles are the same around the world as is the satisfaction and feeling of contentment and how therapeutic it can be cutting your own firewood...
It features some great information and some amazing pictures of stacked firewood...

Turns out a couple of friends already know about and have this book and love it too.
If you follow  This link... to Amazon for the book you can read the first few pages of the book,
It`s a hard book to put down once you get into it...


Here is a film on Youtube by SkillCult of his own review of the book...


You can read his own blog post of the book Here...

I like SkillCult`s approach to cutting wood, just using basic tools.
Here is two of his films and what he uses and why...





More tools in use...
99% of people probably use a chainsaw nowadays to do the cutting, but you could go old school...




Back home...
My own little wood stock is slowly growing!

5 meters deep, 3 months dried Willow...

Green Willow...

Scots Pine and Ash...

My late fathers axes, he bought these when engaged to mum, so there over 50 years old now...

Building for the future...


More soon...

Sand Road Truckers...

February is always a cold month here on the coast in East Lothian.
The National TV news says it is the wettest winter ever and news shows severe flooding etc down in the south of England and Wales, and there has been a lot of coastal damage- something we seem to have missed here in SE Scotland.
Yes there is tidal erosion in recent weeks here in East Lothian but it is of sand dunes built up from wind driven sand that has been washed out and deposited elsewhere on our coast and not chunks of coastline disappearing into the sea as shown further south on the east coast. We have been really lucky here in East Lothian this winter so far...

We have been lucky in our county with the weather forecasts too. We have missed most of the heavy rain fore casted this month and there has until today only been a sprinkling of snow on the Lammermuirs.

But ask anyone who works outside on the east coast and they will tell you that damp cold weather feels a lot colder than any ice or snow does, In our Highland Mountains it is the cold damp that kills people with Hypothermia. This year the damp cold air has been really cold here on the coast at sea level.
Been a lot of cold Green keepers like myself who will vouch for this in the last few weeks.
I think this year it has been so cold with a damp feel in the air it really makes you appreciate the warmer days to come, and a warm house to sit in during an evening after a cold damp day outdoors...

I am saving for a wood burning stove with back boiler for my house, but until then will continue to enjoy sitting in front of my open fire-natures TV, i watch my friends who visit with their eyes glued to the whirling and flickering flames that are forever changing-no artificial flame can reproduce that warm atmosphere that a real fire has...

Cycling still goes on through winter for myself whatever the weather, you just have to adapt and ride the right bike for the conditions; from commuting on freebie bikes through the mud and road salt encrusted roads,  to cycling on the clean-mud free coastline on a fatbike-taken to work on the back of the car with the FatBOB Trailer in the boot, and then after work making the most of the increasing hours of daylight and enjoying a beach ride and collecting tidal wood washed up in our River Tyne Estuary at John Muir Park at Dunbar...

A walk through this lot left from the last River Tyne spate in the Estuary finds a lot of seasoned hard wood logs washed down into the bay. Too heavy to carry on foot but ok to transport with a Fatbike and Fat tyre trailer back to the car park...

Probably twice the 4130 cro moly BOB trailers weight limit i continue to be amazed at the strenght of this trailer and the old Pugsley to be able to cycle off of the coast pulling this weight!...

5 loads and 2 hours later were back home with a car load of hardwood Oak and Beach, and also some Scots Pine...

After another electric chainsaw massacre...

And split with `Old Faithful`, my dads Hickory shafted axe he gave me along with a small Kindling axe-both he bought over 45 years ago!...

Already seasoned this lot will be dry enough in a week to burn on the fire...

Free coastal heating...Fun to collect, exercise to spilt... enjoyment to sit in front of with a nice cider after a day working outside in the damp cold...

snail..bah-humbug....

well the bubbles burst..at least here on the coast in east lothian..i woke to rain this morning..on and off most of the day mixed with hail,snail i believe alaskans call it...though my mate 10 miles inland at the foot of lammermuirs texted saying more snow..back to work tomorrow looking like a commute on the old dale on slushy roads...
milder weather meant my garden hose had thawed so i got the pugsley washed and got the chain cleaned,spent most of day out in the workshop,swept it out while running the motorbike for 15mins to give the battery a charge and fired up the stove to dry out any moisture...

something about stoves..i prefer an open fire in my livingroom for sure but would love an old range in the kitchen to cook on and sit in front of..,
the stove in my workshop is a machine mart cottager i got it free from a mate as it has the odd leak from him having burned it at high temps and the door has distorted a bit...,sometimes it leaks sometimes it dosnt...i got the chimney piping for free..,its 8" stainless instead of 6" but another mate made a reducer...

it dosnt give quite the same amount of draw as a 6" pipe chimney so takes a wee while longer to warm up and draw properly..,but a free stove and chimney pipe cant be knocked..kicks out some heat even in a 30sqm sectional concrete garage...

i sat for an hour or two having a couple of ciders and listening to some tunes..,i look on a workshop/garage as an extension on a home ideally connected then stroll out the house straight into the man cave

trail clearing

remember way back (only 8 months ago) i made one of my first films down a local trail through a strip of woods off the local garlton hills its a good 2 minutes of good nice singletrack descent
and that happened..,well all summer this real nice bit of trail has constantly had stuff pulled across it including large logs-well no more!,cause i went out tonight on the hybrid and bob trailer...

so whats in the bob trailer?,the petrol chainsaw!!!,time to rebel..

also the local land owner hasnt bothered about the path either and has also used barbed wire to try and discourage people using this path claiming it was put up to stop illegal dumping..yeah right!!,next week im heading up again with a pair of lopers that cut branches up too an inch and will cut the trail back far enough to see down it and therefore can see anything pulled across the trail again in the future,,.thing is this trail is only 3 miles from my house and probably one of the best 2 minute sections of flowy singletrack in the county and the more some asshole trys and spoils it for cycling the more i will go up and do more removing stuff to deter them...cause time is something i have lots of spare for things like this...
heres a film i made chainsawing,some angry music too!,but now im peaced its sorted...

pugsley goes to the beach after the big flood

so with a clear sky,low tide 8.50am and more rain forcasted later in the day i headed for john muir park as i can ride there all offroad after a 1/4 mile of road from my house and the bay being the estuary there would be lots of wood and stuff washed down out the river tyne

this is the john muir trail which will take me to then along the river tyne to the bay there was still alot of standing water from the burn which had overflowed
look at the snails i assume were about the height the water had reached!

i ploughed through the water on the pugsley making a big bow wave!

this amount of water will take a while to drain away...

the john muir way turns onto this old road-now closed to public vehicles,its called `ware road` on old maps and was used in the past to cart seaweed off the beach for applying as a fertilizer on local farms

pugsley managed to break the farmers speedlimit!

down onto the sand and along the coast there was as expected alot of wood washed down...



and there was another police `no waiting` cone!

the bag of rubbish beside it was a gentleman picking up plastic and other rubbish off the beach,he does this voluntry-we should all do an odd day or half day lifting plastic off the beach,i stacked up a pile near gullane about 8 months ago and its still there!,
had`nt noticed this before,must have been the old shore banking now long gone,proberly was sea buckthorn,the tree with the orange berries...

i didnt take that many pics as i was mostly filming but there really is so much on any beach you could photograph,sometimes i just park up and soak up the views..

when you have an hour of film clips its hard to cut it all down into a maximum 10 minutes for youtube,im trying to make my films shorter and pack more in,keeps them more intresting,i try to imagine what someone who dosnt cycle see`s when they watch,-proberly that were all nuts!!,22 miles in 3 1/2 hours crammed into a 2 minute 30 second film...