Last day of the year

Almost time to reflect on what I’ve managed to do in the last 12 months, but not quite!

Today has been a nice dry day so I decided to have a bit of a tidy up in the garden and a good weed of all my raised beds, its looking decidedly better for a mornings hard work.
I’ve also been sorting out some of my other gifts. I got loads of camping equipment ready for my week’s extreme survival in June. Going on this course is my brothers and mine bit of extravagance, where we will spend a week in Northern Scotland being trained by an ex-Royal Marine Commando with a minimum of kit. We’ve done things like this before but not for a week, hopefully we will both carry on to do the next course after that as well.
The kit list isn’t massive but I want it all to be good quality stuff as the OS map of the area we’ll be camping in only has two houses on the whole map, so no chance to buy any more!

Claire brought me an excellent self inflating mattress that’s tiny when deflated, her Nan brought me a compass, and from my mum and my brother I got a small dry bag (to keep a camera and phone out of the wet in), a mossey head net, small screw shut bottles for salt, pepper & cooking oil and a Spork (I’ve always wanted a Spork – not a fork and not a spoon! The best of both worlds!)Claire and I both got to try some homemade yoghurt today by using the kit my best mate had brought us for Christmas. I don’t think I left it to set long enough as it is quite runny but tastes really good (had it on my muesli for breakfast), next time I’ll make sure I leave it a bit longer. With this kit you don’t use milk but bags of powder you have to buy, it works out slightly cheaper than yogurt and its meant to be better for your digestion (which I have plenty of problems with).