The Wilderness Witch, Death of an Old Ally + Major Treehouse Development
Benniboy broke his clutch, and couldn't risk driving the miata. So he decided to cycle to the wilderness, as he could go across the field behind the deep wilder, he would cut off a couple of miles. It was about 4-5 miles.
Benniboy left at 11.30 and got to the deep wilder at 12. Nh was just walking to the treehouse. Benniboy chained up his bike to the base of the treehouse. Nh had brought the rubber club, this would help us smack the claw in.
We quickly transferred all the timber from level 2 down to level 1. By the time it was all down most of level 1 was at full capacity.
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| Even before the roof timber was down |
Next we started taking the old roof and structures down. Hammering the claw in behind the nails and then cranking it worked for most of the pieces. Some needed a bit more force. The pieces of timber came down one by one, the gaps got bigger and the new roof structure was revealed below.
After about an hour of wiggling, hammering and pulling out timber - we had all the old roof off. Only a few structures were left.
You can see how much lower the new floor is, it still provides a very generous headroom of about a foot. This allows us to use the extra space to make level 2 much quicker and will make the total height of the treehouse better. We alread have 3 planks worth of wall on the north and south.
Sadly a very bad event happened today - we lost an old, trusty ally. We had to say goodbye to the claw hammer. It served us well over the past months. It even took over the job of the club over the past few weeks. It gave it's last hammers and wrenches today, managing to disassemble a whole floor. Eventually it had to break, already injured from some harsh treatment when pulling nails out of the sapling castle, the claw snapped at the neck.
Luckily it had done most of the work needed. We managed to hammer a couple more of the remaining structures out. Then we started adding the new floor.
We decided on a new design. We made sure the floor boards fit in the best positions. As the floor structure was to constructed a very high level, we didn't need to use any blocks to level out the wobbling boards. They nailed in straight away and were fully supported by the well spread beams.
During the last nailing in of the boards we were confronted by a woman. She very quietly said "Excuse me". We thought she was talking to her dog, as it was too quiet. We looked over and she said "Can I have a word with one of you?"
Benniboy climbed down and spoke to her - it was the wilderness witch, with her white west highland terrier. She wanted to know if any park rangers had spoken to us. She warned us that people were talking about the treehouse. She said we should make sure its tidy, no rubbish or nails. Don't paint it red, then she referred to the sapling castle, when it was blue and pink.
She knew a lot, too much, even though we never see her and the last time we spoke to her was at the start of our wilder adventures. She preferred Ray Mears bush craft type constructions and said this was a bit too much. She informed us that the wilder was owned by a lord and lady and not the council, another grou[ of treeswingers had to take down a treehouse in the deep. She ended on a good note and said it was impressive and you could see her thinking of when she did wilder studies man years ago. Then her last words were have fun in your castle. She knew we used the word castle, she probably saw the sapling castle title on the steps on the sapling.
This was a neutral encounter and it has made us sharpen up on our cleaning duties. We finished off the last of the main boards, there are only a few gaps on the floor. We could finish these using planks and by cutting up some of the remaining boards.
Then we went to the pound shop in hopes of getting some bin bags, they didn't have any, but we got some more worker gloves. We then went to Subway. Got the sub of the day. We returned to the car, ate the subs and deployed to the wilder.
We used a Sainbury's bag to collect the rubbish at the base of the treehouse. Then collected the bike. We went up the bin, Nh in the fiesta and Benniboy on his bike. We disposed of the rubbish and deployed home