Camping in a Cave with campfire cooking

Hello again everyone and happy Halloween. This year, in good tradition, I've come to a spooky place. I'm at a cave. With me, behind the camera here, is Simon. You'll know him as the bloke in the woods. And yeah, we're doing a night in this old cave house. It's got quite a history attached to it, which I'll go over in a bit. But yeah, we've had highwaymen here and all sorts, so maybe we'll catch some ghosts on the trail camera later. But for now, yeah, we're just going to get tidied up, clear some of these rocks away and just make some room for camp. You might hear some bees in the background. There's masonry bees in here and they're kind of tunneling into the sandstone, the soft sandstone, for kind of laying eggs and whatnot. But now we've cleared up a bit, we're not tripping over ourselves or over any kind of stones or anything. This is the inside of the cave house. So it's a natural sandstone cave and this side would have been what was used in 16th century highwaymen etc. But it was later formed into a cave house and you can see tooling marks along the walls where bits have been chipped away. Behind me here is where the fireplace would have been, with an area above which we've been told was used with like a tin bath for heating the water and bathing the children. Scattered around the walls of the cave are alcoves which have been carved out for storage and for candles for lighting. We'll be using them tonight. But it's a beautiful place, we're very lucky to be here. This is a private estate which is why this has been preserved so well, no one else can get here. The last family that lived here around 1890 they moved out into a shepherd's hut that's still here and it was a family of five living in this tiny cave. There's a small extension built on the cave to the side here which the family pig would have been kept in. It's just got natural sandstone walls and some sandstone blocks which have been made from the sandstone on site here. You can see the remains of someone's dinner down here as well, quite a few bird bones. You can see we're in the extension area of the cave house now so there's no roof though there is the remains of it. You can see the tooling marks in the natural sandstone walls and you may even just about see the sandstone blocks that have been made with hand tools to have an extra level on top here. I've got a fireplace to my left here which still has the remains of a chimney as well, gradually being reclaimed by nature. I'm going to mix up tasks a bit. Simon's going to do a bit of levelling in the cave here. I'm going to take my bloke in the wood saw and start on firewood. The irony. Bloke in the wood saw? Where'd you get those from? You can't get them. I've decided it's time we need a brew so I've got this new grill because it's so flat and light. I thought I'd bring it. It's called a pico grill and they're from Switzerland so I had to get it off their website but check that out. It's just nothing to it so yeah I'll set this up and we'll get a brew on. So all you have to do with this is take out the trivet and you squeeze it together and just the little tray should fall down and that locks in there and there and your trivet will go from end to end like so. I do like burning in a new stove. Beautiful. I've got quite a lot of softwood so could do with some hardwood really for some nice coals and there's some nice oak up here. This is on top of the cave. It's time to light the lanterns now we've got the candles done. It does look nicely. So the chicken is browned. I've got a load of baby potatoes and little tiny carrots. They've got a name. I can't remember what they are. Andy? Baby carrots. They've got a name. Chantilly? No it's cream. Something anyway. They're little carrots. So they're all going in and the celery and the onion and we've got one of them little bottles of wine. Two chicken stock cubes. One, two. Pop that up with water. Well as per normal we've decided to do a meal each like we do on a lot of trips and Simon has got her dinner and I've got breakfast which I think is the reverse of the last one. I think so. I can't really remember. I think you did kidneys? No that was down the woodland. Oh yes we mixed on the other one. He's got the pressure cooker which he had in his pack which probably took up a bulk of the room. Whole chicken as you saw went in and some veg and some wine and some stock and beauty of this is this could take what half hour you say? Yeah it's about 20 minutes to cook and then you take it off and let it cool down and let the pressure come out of it naturally. It takes about another 15 minutes so sort of half an hour. Like a third of the time that you usually take cooking chicken. Exactly yeah. We are hungry. Everything's locked in. All the flavours are all locked in as well so you get the benefit of all the flavours. Nothing's lost. Well very kindly George, Rachel and Finlay kind of organised this for us with the estates we could be on here so cheers to you guys. They also gave us these ridiculous one litre beer cans which make us look like little tiny people. They're cool aren't they? They are amazing. They're brilliant. I've never seen anything like it. Viking beer. Our personal keggers. So yeah cheers guys thank you very much. Yeah thank you. What a spot. Yeah isn't it? Opportunity. Just rare isn't it? Rare to have an opportunity to come and do something like this. It's better than the last time. Yeah yeah. Let's see if I can get get this out of here whole now. Break. I think we lost some wings. Legs. Oh no the legs are on. Thanks everyone. Right then. The chicken's sitting in my plate at the moment so I'm just gonna I don't know cut it in half. We can cut the rest of the leg off and put the rest back in the pot temporarily. I'll tell you what that is cooked. That was 20 minutes of cooking time and resting time. That is unreal. Look at that. Actually that is juicy and tender as you like. I'm squeezing my breast. Bit of thigh with your breast. Oh yeah yeah yeah. You'll have to wait for your wing. It's still in the pot. Don't be hungry. Get some veggies out of there. Veggies? Well you know garnish. Ain't nothing like a chicken wing and a bone. Just pouring that. That fire is really hot and burning. Perfect. This is absolutely lovely. I just can't believe 20 minutes for a big chicken. It's quite a big chicken wasn't it? Absolutely brilliant. A little bit to carry but it came out so well. We were both so hungry as well we needed this. Just as well you had that pressure cooker. Yeah I wouldn't have fancied waiting an hour and a half for dinner. No I was well ready. Didn't even have very big fire did we? That's the beauty about them. You hardly need any fuel really you know. Heats up quick and holds it all in. Heats up quick yeah. We've just been sat by the campfire here just chatting away and appreciating the cave really. It's just such a lovely spot and it's such a quiet woodland. Middle of nowhere really. Just really reflecting the heat from this fire as well. You wouldn't even know it's autumn really would you? No. It's lovely as well. Yeah it's not even been a particularly big fire. Big reflector isn't it? I think we'll do all right in our bivvies tonight. Yeah yeah for sure. Yeah just had a beer and a chat and just chilling. It's been a little while hasn't it? It has been. Is it April? Yeah it's got to be about April. Yeah I reckon. Yeah it's been a little while. Long enough for sure. There's still bees buzzing about you know. Yeah the odd ones. I think we're smoking them out here and there. Smoking them out of their holes. Well we're just back from walking down to the water garden down the bottom there which is quite eerie at night with the trail camera set up. So we'll see what we get in the morning and it's time for us both to set up as we haven't already. We don't want to be tripping over all our gear and we've both gone with bivvy bags. I've got the snug pack one. What bivvy you got Simon? We're snug packing it up. Yeah. So yeah we'll just get this set up and get ourselves off for the night. My axe replacement for camps like this. You don't want to be bringing an axe. Any small bits. The rain has either slowed right down or it just was coming out of the trees now which is nice. I've got these lovely bits of oak on here now which is going to give you some lovely coals because I'm doing some biscuits and sausage gravy for breakfast for us. I've got the Dutch oven with me and Simon's gloves drying out because he left them out in the rain. I've got in this bag my pre-mix that I made for the biscuits. The flour and baking powder etc. So I'm just going to put that in a transier bowl just to mix up. A little extra. All right that's the mix. I'm just going to add in some butter which could be colder to be honest but you have to make do sometimes. It's time to slowly add in the milk and get that mixed together now. So here's our mixture. Pretty generous amount for two of us. That's all extra. A bit of debris. Just pat it down rather than roll it out. Just cut some of these. Start putting the biscuits in the Dutch oven here. Just on some baking paper. All right I'll just leave that for a while and check on it five to ten minutes. Okay let's have a little look. What do you reckon? Pretty done to me. Good. Take them off. I've already got a tiny bit of oil in there but I'm just going to put in the sausage mate. I'm just going to start sprinkling in flour to make a kind of a roux pretty much with the oils from the sausage. All right here we go. Okay to handle so I'll just stick them. Didn't rise too much but such gravy. Well it's a little bit smoky in here where the wind's changed this morning but we've all eaten now so time to finish packing this stuff away so we can get going. We've both got quite a long journey. That's the trail camera picked up. You guys probably would have already seen what's on it from last night but I'm yet to see. I'm going to have a look when I get home. Maybe we've got something spooky. Incidentally where I put the trail camera was this old water garden what was once a water garden. They strimmed it back for us knowing we're coming to the estate today just so we could see it a bit like how it would have been and I'm sure all of these the terraces going up the hill to where the cave is and everything would have been all ornate gardens at some point on this estate but yeah I'm liking it all overgrown and kind of reclaimed by nature but I thought this was quite a spooky spot for putting the camera. Right let's finish getting packed up and get out of here. Right that is us done just to walk out now which isn't too bad to be honest but it's been a beautiful place to stay the night absolutely wonderful little cave or quite big cave actually and yeah thanks for Simon he helped organize this with them. Thank you. Invited me along knowing I'd love a cave. Yes. So check out Simon's take on it on Simon's Bloke in the Woods channel and we'll see you guys on the next one. Wild stallions! It's a terribly short. I might just ever so quickly put them closer. I'm getting smoke now. Yeah I did just burn myself on my lantern which probably looks a bit silly but and yeah we'll see what the trail camera sets up. Now I'm doing it. All right well Good morning. Hello everyone and Get ourselves off for the night. Does get ourselves off for the night sound rude? There you are. There.