I've been making a staff today. We went out to the woods and I found a nice long piece of Beech wood lying in the undergrowth. It has a fork at one end, handy for resting my thumb on. Then we went off for a walk and finally sat down by a stream up in the hills (where I saw an enormous dragonfly) to have our dinner and then we whittled all the dry bark off. I think this gave the passing hikers something to talk about, but I don't care, it was a most pleasant afternoon

. I've now started to sand it down, and it's looking great - lots of nice woodgrain patterns coming through. All for the price of £2 to park the car.