On the trail heading toward Ullådalen |
Today's post will be about the travel aspect of bushcrafting and camping abroad. With budget airlines offering flights for as little as £9.99 nowadays getting away to Scandinavia or other European destinations to do a bit of bushcrafting really isn't difficult or expensive anymore. You can get a return flight to Stockholm or Oslo for less than the cost of a train ticket to London.
The problem comes from all the kit that you need to take with you to enjoy the outdoors. Yes as bushcrafters we boast about our ability to make do without heavy tents, stoves and other 'modern' camping kit but even if we can pack light enough to fit all our kit in a tiny cabin bag there will be things we need to take which can't be carried as hand luggage; knife, saw and axe will never be allowed in the cabin and you will have to purchase space in the hold. The price for this varies from airline to airline and with the time of year. On our recent trip a 20kg hold bag cost us £25 per flight, a total of £50 on top of the price of the ticket, but as that only cost £46 for the both of us that still was very reasonable, under £100 for both of us to get to Sweden.
There is a very valid question to ask at this point; is it cheaper to buy bushcrafting tools when you get to your destination than to pay for the hold luggage?
Gransfors axes in the Sveavägen branch of Natturkompaniet |
Would it be less hassle to buy tools at your destination that have to carry hold luggage? |
[NOTE: the prices in the text do not necessarily match the Amazon prices shown here, but I can highly recomend the Bacho saw, the fiskars axe and anything by Hultafors]
The added benefit of packing your own tools is that you can use the tools that you are familiar with and presumably quite attached to and ones which you trust in terms of their performance and quality.
My bushcraft knife by Ammonite Knives being used to prepare a meal of 'korv' (sausage) and foraged hedgehog fungi |
A key to making this kind of adventure fun for children is not to load them down with too much kit, I carried both sleeping bags, all the shelter kit, both fishing rods and the bulk of the tools, leaving Michael with a small bag for his spare clothes, a spare poncho liner, his knife and some snacks. At eight years old loading him down with too much kit could easily have turned a fun adventure into a misery, there will be a time and a place for him to carry heavy loads but this wasn't it. So as a parent be aware on trips like this, whether at home or abroad, you will need to carry the bulk of the kit otherwise your children won't enjoy it, definitely make them carry something but not everything. For this reason a 80-100 litre rucksack is an absolute must for overnight trips especially in Winter. If you are out camping and bushcrafting with children you might be carrying multiple sleeping bags, multiple changes of clothes more food than you usually would, it all adds up and a bigger bag is the only solution.
hiking through the birch forest near Ullsjön |
Once we had made it to Skavsta airport which is Stockholms equivalent of the UK's Stanstead we had a little over an hour on the bus to get us to the centre of Stockhols where we could catch the night train to Åre, a nine hour train ride away in Jämtland and quite close the the Norwegian border. The connection bus cost £44 for a return journey and seats on the night train £72.52, a cabin with beds would have increased the cost considerably but can still be had for a reasonable price, a return trip with beds would have cost in the region of £180.
When you are bushcrafting abroad be extra careful with vital documents like boarding passes, passports and money, keep them in a waterproof bag and try to keep them in one place so you don't forget and panic about them. When you are transiting through bus stations and airports have them to hand in a pocket but while you are on the trail a sealed dry bag in the main compartment of your bag is the best place for them so they don't get soaked or lost.
So don't think that bushcrafting abroad is out of reach, Michael and I went to Sweden for about £212 and were there for five days. Yes if you start to add accommodation on to that it adds up and if you want to eat out at restaurants then that adds to the price but our grocery bill was about £38, not including the pizza we had in Stockholm before we came home. The rations we bought for the trail and our nights camping included rice, dried potato, korv, rice porridge (it comes in plastic tubes like dog food and doesn't weight anything near as much as tinned rice pudding), hot chocolate, vegetable stock, tomato puree, tortillas and cheese. We had hoped to supplement that with some fish but were very unlucky in that respects but did forage a couple of meals worth of mushrooms which you can read about in tomorrows special edition of the Foragers Diary.
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