Ernest's camping essentials

Waking up to the smell of the forest and a percolating campfire coffee, trudging unknown lands, rustling up one-pot meals and settling down for a night's sleep beneath the stars – is there anything better? Of course there isn't. Here's our guide to the perfect camping essentials for all your outdoor needs...

Raincoat

While we don’t want to tempt fate and dampen the rather splendid weather we have been enjoying in recent weeks, lets face it, it’s better to be safe than sorry when it comes to the unpredictability of the British weather. Pack this rather fetching RAINS Denmark raincoat and you’re guaranteed to be prepared for those surprise downpours.
RAINS Denmark Rain Coat, Special Edition in Navy & Yellow, Harrison & Fyfe, £84

 

Washbag

This functional and handsome wash bag by Swedish design duo Sandqvist is made from heavy duty canvas and Cognac leather and is built to last. Use it to store your essential camping grooming items when space is restricted.
Sandqvist Adrian Wash Bag, Harrison & Fyfe, £59

 

Kelly Kettle 

A timeless and cracking bit of camping kit, this classic camping kettle has been fuelling generations of fisherman off the West coast of Ireland since the late 1800s. It is lightweight and portable and this large Base Camp model can hold up to 1.6ltr of water - morning brews all round!
Kelly Kettle, Baker + Bell, £50

 

Cooking set

This two-piece cook set combines both a mug and lid pan, allowing you to cook two things at once, ideal when you’re short on both time and camping fuel and eager to get moving. It is made from titanium which means its lightweight and easy to carry and it will even store other items from the Vargo cookware set, when you are limited on space in your camping rucksack.
Vargo Ti Boiler, Pedal + Tread, £49.95

 

Spork

We love a good spork here at Ernest, an ingenious bit of camping kit that kills two birds with one stone by combining both fork and spoon. Its the perfect utensil for eating hot baked beans cooked over the campfire, or anything else you desire to eat campside. This one by Vargo folds up making it even more compact to transport.
Vargo Foldable Spork, Pedal + Tread, £11.95

 

Shorts

These sharp looking summer chino shorts are the perfect bit of campsite clothing when the Great British weather is on your side. Made from Italian milled cotton, trimmed with Swiss hardware and lined with English Liberty Shirting fabric, they are ultra comfy.
Summer Grey Chino Shorts, Spoke, £45

 

Cooler bag

Good old Les is built to last from the hardiest of all sheep wool, the Herdwick. He’s also been proven to keep ice frozen for up to eight hours, which means hes the perfect travelling food storage device when camping.
Les Canvas Cooler Bag, Millican, £95

 

Notebook

This pack of assorted notebooks, handmade in Britain by the Society of Revisionist Typographers are exclusive to the chaps over at Pedal and Tread and are perfect for recording campfire notes. Their inspired covers adorned with quotes from the likes of our namesake Mr Hemmingway are sure to ignite your inner wanderlust. The Mountains are calling, GO!
SORT notebooks, 3 designs per pack, Pedal + Tread, £7

 

We chose this fine array of camping items from our directory members, a delectable troupe of independent brands, makers and artisans who can cater for every sartorial, grooming, leisure and office need. If you would like to join our directory, please email advertise@ernestjournal.co.uk

Textures of Iceland

While the vast emptiness will enthral you, it’s the details – the lichen covered lava, the wave scarred driftwood, the unearthly hues – that will stay with you long after you’ve left Iceland’s shores

Photographer Colin Nicholls travelled to Iceland in March 2014. You can see more of his stunning work and explore more of Iceland's haunting landscapes, in print issue 1 and iPad issue 2 of Ernest Journal, on sale now.

A wild day out with Hunter Gather Cook

Get your hands dirty on an action-packed day of wild meat butchery, hedgerow foraging and bramble beer brewing. It's all in a day's work for the chaps at Hunter Gather Cook

Image: Greg Funnell

Image: Greg Funnell

As we approach the final 24 hours of our Kickstarter countdown, we still have a few places left on one of our most awesome incentives: a wild day out with Hunter Gather Cook and the Ernest team.

Nick Weston of Hunter Gather Cook will throw you in the deep end with a wild meat butchery field camp, teaching you how to skin, gut and joint meat in preparation for lunch. You'll then embark on a foraging walk in glorious Sussex woodland and meadows, learning how to identify seasonal wild edibles along the way. Then it's back to Nick's new treehouse HQ to smoke your food and prepare a wild banquet, before rounding the day off with a wild brewing workshop and stories around the fire. You'll also get a copy of our first printed issue, a few surprise thank you gifts and, of course, a treehouse high five from the Ernest team. 

Expect a good dousing of wood smoke and an opportunity to learn outdoor skills that will stay with you forever. What on earth are you waiting for?

To whet your appetite for the wild day out, have a gander at Hunter Gather Cook's thirst quenching Bramble Brew recipe, as featured in print issue one:

Image: Greg Funnell

Image: Greg Funnell

Bramble Brew

Ingredients

Bramble leaves (carrier bag full)
21⁄2 gallons (12ltr) water
3lb (1.4kg) sugar
2oz (50g) cream of tartar
1⁄2oz (15g) brewer’s or beer yeast.

Method

1. Pick your bramble leaves and give them a quick wash, then place in a big pot of water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes. 2. Strain the liquid into another pan or bucket and discard the leaves.

3. Bring the liquid to the boil again and add the sugar and cream of tartar, simmer and stir. 4. Remove from the heat, transfer into a brewing vessel or bucket and allow to cool to body temperature.Then add the yeast and stir.

5. At this stage, most recipes suggest covering the bucket in muslin and bottling after 24 hours, which could well lead to exploding bottles. Instead, take a hydrometer reading every two days until the reading has dropped below 1.000.You are now safe to bottle your brew.

6. Leave to brew for 2-3 weeks before drinking.

7. Serve chilled in a jug with a sprig of mint.

 

Back our Kickstarter campaign and join Team Ernest and Hunter Gather Cook on this wild day out on Wednesday 9 July, £135.

Birds and the Bitches: my life on Ramsey Island

RSPB reserve assistant Amy Cooper invites Ernest to her little slab off the Pembrokeshire coast, where choughs chow, Manx shearwaters shriek, white ponies slumber in thick sea fog and the fearsome Bitches await their next daring challenger.

The Bitches

The Bitches

Day by day I wake to the electric ‘chow’ of Britain’s rarest corvid, the chough, and fall asleep to the ethereal shriek of Manx shearwaters coming in overhead. I've been a reserve assistant here on Ramsey Island for two years, but it feels more like a lifestyle choice than a job. 

The island lies approximately one kilometre off the Pembrokeshire coast. My nearest metropolis is St David’s – Britain's smallest city. On my weekly day off I could go to the mainland to gather supplies, but I’d rather roam the island at a snail’s pace, pausing often and spying on the local wildlife. Ramsey Island is two miles long from top to tail and is half a mile at its slimmest point. Wherever I am on the island I can always see or at least hear the sea. 

I live in a small squat bungalow on the north of the island and share this space with one to four volunteers and a few hundred woodlice. From my bedroom window I can keep an eye on the grazing Welsh mountain ewes and listen to gulls and crows dropping things on the flat roof above my head. 

In late summer my clear view across the sheep fields is interrupted by the three red deer stags that enjoy feeding and locking antlers outside. At this time of year their rut is a quiet and restrained affair, a rehearsal before the main event. We have 11 red deer, three stags, seven hinds and one young calf that was born just last year. Originally they were carried to Ramsey in a net below an RAF helicopter in the 1970s. A small population have resided here ever since. They aren't the only large mammals here - thy share the space with five welsh mountain ponies. Four of the ponies are a fairytale white and look especially enchanting when the island is smothered in thick sea fog. 

Whenever I go for one of my weekend ambles I have the whole island at my disposal. There is a three-mile circular visitor path around the island with three offshoots so that the cairns on all three of Ramsey’s peaks can be reached. 

There's also a shortcut that divides this island path in two. Many parts of the path are flanked by heather and we have three different types here. Ling is my favourite and blooms later than the others, it isn’t the vibrant purple that I love but the striking smell of honey. The insects seem to love it, too and the heathland bustles with honeybees, bumblebees and butterflies. Garden cross spiders lay there webs everywhere here in August as they hope to catch something like a juicy silvery moth. There are parts of the island that are out of bounds to all but the wardens, the volunteers and myself. This is mostly for safety and conservation reasons but the most inaccessible parts of the island can be seen by boat.

Thousand Islands Expeditions ferries people from the lifeboat station at St Justinians to Ramsey’s snug harbour. They also run boat tours around the island and sometimes I smuggle myself aboard to get a different view of my seasonal home. There are two things that I always look forward to in particular during these afternoon trips, the infamous Bitches and Whelps reef and the seabirds at Glyma. 

In full flow the tidal race through the Bitches is nothing but fearsome – there is a two-metre standing wave and the tide can flow at 16 knots close to the harbour. It is here on these turbulent waters that brave and experienced kayakers come to test their skills. As impressive as the waters are on a good day, there aren’t words that would give justice to the volume of movement through the reef during a storm. For me this is when the Bitches are at their best. 

The sea cliffs at Glyma are around the west side of the island and the boat has to pitch and roll its way past Atlantic grey seals and through the tiny offshore islands at Ramsey’s southern tip to get there. The southern islands are made up of Gwelltog, Beri and Cantwr. Ynys Cantwr is Chanter’s Island in English and it is said that when St Justinian had his chapel on Ramsey he would send priests in need of atonement to the cave there. They would be tied to a large rock inside the cave and would have to chant their penance for the rise and fall of two tides. If the repentant priest managed to survive amidst the raging tidal waters then God must have forgiven him, but more often than not, the priests were not pardoned. St Justinian believed that they hadn’t chanted fervently enough. Nowadays the cave is framed by kittiwakes in their nests and they scream their name at passing boats.

I can normally hear the chorus of razorbills and guillemots at Glyma before I see them clustered on their precarious ledges. If the wind is right I can pick up their unique scent, a mixture of fish, sea salt and ammonia. Birds are constantly coming and going, they have an awkward frenzied flight with wings much better designed for swimming. Sometimes, high above the confusion of seabirds, I can pick out the outline of a cruising falcon. There is a pair of peregrines that hunt here and they seem to have a particular fondness for razorbill. The sheer cliffs here are part of the volcanic formation that make up the highest peak on Ramsey. At 136 metres, Carn Llundain or London hill, is just a prominent geological bump but it has spectacular views. St David’s city is just visible as it protrudes out of its valley. 

From my hilltop platform the warden’s whitewashed farmhouse is clearly visible. Greg and Lisa Morgan with their sheepdog Dewi have lived on and managed Ramsey for the RSPB for eight years. During the spring and summer they share the island with between one and 90 visitors per day, a reserve assistant and several volunteers. During autumn and winter, apart from regular visits by Derek Rees who delivers mail, supplies and sheep on his small aluminium boat, they’re alone on their island. 

Ramsey has been described to me by many people on many different days as a magical place and I simply cannot argue with this. 

Amy was born and bred in Herefordshire but has wandered in many different directions from there. She's currently in the first throes of a love affair with Britain's islands and loves watching birds, identifying spiders and collecting skulls. rspb.org.uk

Our Instagram week with Miscellaneous Adventures

Last week we invited woodsman Andrew Groves of Miscellaneous Adventures to take over our Instagram and he treated us to a feast of bluebells, wood shavings and fondlesome spoons. We pulled him up for a quick chin-wag over a kuksa of something hot and potent.

Photo: Calum Creasey, stokedeversince.com

Photo: Calum Creasey, stokedeversince.com

What's the story behind Miscellaneous Adventures, then?

Miscellaneous Adventures started off as an extension of my illustration work. My work has always been influenced by nature, adventure and folklore and I guess I wanted to do something that connected me more closely with those things. After hiking through the Swedish wilderness and discovering the beautiful folk objects in that part of the world I began to teach myself how to work with wood using traditional methods. Since launching my first collection of wooden objects several years ago, however, it’s developed into an outdoor brand selling wooden utensils, tools and artwork celebrating the great outdoors. We now also run workshops teaching the woodworking and outdoor skills I’ve learnt along the way to other creative, adventurous folk.


What's the allure of working with wood?

Working with wood requires a sensitive and considered approach; it forces you to slow down and study the material. It requires a certain amount of adaptability, too, as each piece of wood is different and you really have to work with natural shapes rather than fight against them. I enjoy that process. Working with unseasoned wood and harvesting the materials myself means I’ve had to learn more about trees, their growing cycles and the forest in general and this too is a big part of the draw.

Andrew Groves lives in a barn in a small Sussex woodland where he makes wooden tools by hand and teaches workshops in wood carving and other skills. You can follow him @Miscel_Adventures on Instagram
miscellaneousadventures.co.uk