Yep so that title was supposed to kind of, sort of, possibly rhyme. It’s a half-assed effort very much in keeping with the operation as a whole. Nice picture right? I like this one a lot, the muted colours, the reflections and just the little bit of fire. It was a shot taken without any real thought or planning and was without a shadow of a doubt the smoothest and most successful part of the whole venture.
This was my first attempt at cooking outdoors on this trip and it was something I had looked forward to with some anticipation. Who doesn’t like the idea of sitting beside a beautiful scenic view seamlessly concocting a delicious meal? And spoiler alert: we did pull it off, the scenery played its part entirely reliably, the food tasted great and I didn’t trip, burn, or otherwise manage to injure myself, didn’t set fire to anything I didn’t intend to and left the place tidier than I found it at the end. So it was all good, but there were one or two obstacles to get to that point.
First of all access was not entirely straightforward. It required climbing down a steep, muddy and hence somewhat slippery bank with the odd protruding rock to step on and the occasional tree to hold on to. Having changed into my hiking boots it wasn’t too difficult to accomplish the first time for scouting purposes. Reattempting it with a folding barbeque, accessories, my bag of gathered dead wood, the food, water and rucksack was…less straightforward. Nonetheless after only fairly minor slippage and with only fairly mild cursing I and all the above managed to arrive in a jumbled heap at the bottom. At which point I realised I’d forgotten the charcoal. So back I went this time hitting my head fairly hard on a tree branch on the way up. It didn’t seem to knock any sense into me though, probably due to my hat cushioning the blow.
Now back in position on the shore with all the required items the next task was getting a fire lit. I’ve done this quite a few times before and I’ve watched many an episode of Bear Grylls but I’m no expert and sometimes it works easily and sometimes it doesn’t and well this time it didn’t. The dry leaves I was using as tinder were burning up too quickly and I just couldn’t get any of the kindling to catch. Several attempts and half a box of matches later I was seriously envisaging a dinner of cereal bars ahead. However stubborn perseverance eventually triumphed over incompetence with help from burning bits of the bag that the charcoal came in.
At that point it started raining. Of course it did. Needless to say I hadn’t prepared at all for this eventuality, despite it having been overcast all day and the weather forecast saying it was going to rain that evening. I could only hope that the fire would be strong enough to withstand what hopefully wouldn’t be too much of a downpour. And I got lucky and it was just a shower, the fire survived and once again I was able to hope for more than cereal bars. I’m sure Bear Grylls thinks of all this stuff beforehand.
Another thing Bear Grylls probably thinks about is whether the damn loch he’s sitting next too is tidal or not. I was surprised to find, upon looking up from my fire care activities (it required a fair deal of blowing into to keep it chipper) that the water, which had initially been positioned a respectful distance from me and my efforts, had now encroached to within a couple of feet. Thankfully the legs of the folding barbeque, which is actually an ingenious design and folds flat hardly taking up any room in the van, were still cool enough for me to able to shuffle it back a bit. This operation would be repeated several times throughout the remainder of the process. My oversight in this regard was all the more disappointing given that the day before I had spent all day on the other side of the same loch and saw the tide come and go first hand so why it didn’t occur to me that the other side of the same body of water would be the same I can’t really tell you.
At this point an inquisitive head popped out of the water in front of me. Unbelievably a seal had turned up to check what the hell this fool was doing on the side of its home. After staying in position for quite some time with a confused expression on it’s face it gave what I’m sure was the seal equivalent of a shrug and disappeared back underwater. Meanwhile despite being in a race against time with the water and now being ridiculed by the local wildlife, my charcoal was hot and I was in danger of actually being able to cook something.
And I did! It took a while, it was pretty simplistic, I almost dropped it a couple of times. But at the end I had a burger and a roasted pepper (my favourite item to put on a barbeque ever) and it all tasted great. I got to have dinner before getting my feet wet, cleared everything up and picked up the other litter that was already there, managed to drag everything back up the bank in a couple of trips without further incident. Then looked down and discovered I had ketchup all down my trousers.
I’m sure with the lessons learned from this first attempt and a bit more practice I’ll soon have this all running like a well-oiled machine. And if I don’t well that’s still ok because there’s actually some good news.
I really quite like cereal bars.