The first of the 2 days at Exbury Gardens in the beautiful New Forest brought rain.

On the second day the Discover Bus was accompanied  by the Mesolithic woodworking project a log boat making workshop in which volunteers and the general public were to try their hand at building a log boat using only traditional stone and wooden tools of the type our ancestors would have used 8,000 years ago. 

The volunteers learn how to fashion a log boat using wooden and stone tools under the watchful eye of Dr Sara Rich (second from the right)

 Oscar and Jan from the Common Cultural Connections team learn that hollowing out a log using Mesolithic tools is no easy task!

A video of the day which also shows a drowned village where this was happening around 8,000 year ago can be seen here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQkKGLELIJ8   

 The Kids get stuck in

 Heating up the flints to soften the wood is causing some hazy problems!

The girls use antler horn and and wooden hammers to learn how to split the wood 

Experimenting with stone tool production