By Adam Year 8

This of a short review of my day out with Ray Mears, which I won with the Ordnance Survey:

We had to drive down to Crawley in Sussex, the day before the event, which was a Friday. It was a long car journey taking about six hours some of which was on the dreaded M25 London motorway. Eventually my family and I arrived at a nice and modern hotel near Gatwick, were we booked in for two nights.

That night all the twelve competition winners met for the first time and we all had a really nice meal together, one of the winners had flown down from a remote Scottish Isle!

The next day we all had to get up early as the mini-bus was leaving at 9 o’clock to take us and the Ordnance Survey group leaders to Ashdown Forest to meet Ray Mears, we were all very excited especially the adults.

When we arrived we got off the mini-bus and saw a dark green Land –Rover come into the car park, this was Ray Mears’ car, everyone was really excited. We all stood and watched as he took out his bags. He welcomed us all to the forest and gave us a shelter, cup, hot chocolate sachet and a metal can. We grouped into pairs and set off into the forest.

We stopped and Ray talked to us about making a map on the floor out of things like twigs and leaves and how to make it 3D.  We got into groups of four and made a mud map of the forest on the floor.

After this we moved on and Ray talked to us about how to orientate yourself through the forest if you don’t have a compass. You do this by looking at a tree, and deciding which side has the most branches. That side is the one that is facing south.

He gave us all our own firelighters and told us that the best thing for starting a fire was birch bark and he showed us how to get it off a dead birch tree. We all got a piece and used our fire lighter to make a fire. After extinguishing the fire, we carried on walking through the forest and Ray talked to us about different things in the forest.

When it came to lunch, we put up a shelter for our group and then we used some birch bark and sticks to make a fire, then we filled our cans with water from the stream and put them into the fire. We sat under our shelter and ate our lunch, then used the water from the metal can to make hot chocolate. We each had our photograph taken with Ray and a chance to talk to him. Then we packed up and carried on through the forest.

At the end of the day we all got a signed copy of his new book. It was a great day, although it was very tiring, it’s a day I’ll remember for the rest of my life!