Mud: the pros and cons?

[Baron Morgan]

Hi all,

I'm a long time enthusiast of all things messy when it comes to food but need to expand my horizons to mud. I'd welcome any advice on what's good and what's bad, any drawbacks, or really anything else.

Cheers

[mattbuck]

Well, I guess a big disadvantage is that it's outside, so very weather-dependant, and hard to find quiet places to do it.

[Baron Morgan]

Thanks.

How about different types of mud?

[Muddyben]

From my limited experience nice clay mud from a river bank is ideal. Less lumps and stones in it. Other boggy mud often has insects etc and some interesting aromas!

Being next to the river is ideal for cleaning up afterwards and...if you do get caught (clothed that is) you could try and say you fell in!

Ben

[Muddyben]

From my limited experience nice clay mud from a river bank is ideal. Less lumps and stones in it. Other boggy mud often has insects etc and some interesting aromas!

Being next to the river is ideal for cleaning up afterwards and...if you do get caught (clothed that is) you could try and say you fell in!

Ben

[portcityslophouse]

where i live all the good mud has oyster beds in it. Very hard to find a spot where you won't get sliced up. A wrong step will land you thigh deep with several deep gashes on your bare legs. Got to be EXTREMELY careful.

[Lizzie_Claymore]

Yes, I agree with the comments above. One really big advantage is that there is so much of it out there! If you're using food indoors, you have to be careful as otherwise it's all gone in 2 mins and there's the clearup to think about. Outdoors in the mud, you can go bonkers in it and there's always more available! Result!

On the downside, clean-up can be an arse to avoid getting it all over the inside of the car for the journey home.

The way I used to do it was to take my mountain bike out, with me dressed in cycle gear and carrying my sploshing outfit in a carrier bag over the handlebars. I'd go to my fave spot - an especially quaggy and secluded bridle path in the middle of nowhere that was pretty much unused as it was unpassably quaggy on foot. I'd then change into my outfit and have my fun then wash off as much as possible in the large puddles before changing back into the cycle gear again, carrying the muddy clothes back in the plastic carrier bag they arrived in.

Sadly, the council drained and hardcored that bridlepath a couple of years ago and I haven't found a suitable replacement yet.

I know some people go barefoot in the mud but I don't think that's sensible as there can be sharp things in it. Soft clay is definitely the best as it is smooth and spreads beautifully, giving superb coverage and retains the moisture (and, hence, its viscosity) extraordinarily well. Ordinary top-soil type mud isn't much good for clothes or tights filling as the water just drains out straight away and you're left with just coarse sand in there which can be irritating!!

I find that the best is where you get wide and deep tractor ruts that fill with water in areas where there are alluvial deposits near rivers on flood plains etc. If you stand in those, you can scoop out the soft clay with the tiniest particles that is always the last to settle under the water. You can get a huge handful of lovely soft sloppy clay which is ideal for dropping into panties, tights or throwing up the inside of a skirt (or just smearing). The water in the ruts comes in handy later for the clean off.

Of course, you need to be careful which type of field you're in if you want to make sure it's just clay and mud and not something a lot more unpleasant if cows have been around. (Urrgh! - OK, I know some of you are into that but it's a major turnoff for me and probably most others!)

I'm guessing that rivers that are far enough inland not to be tidal (but not so far inland as to be fast flowing and, thus, not depositing clay) won't have the oyster problem but you need to be careful with rivers as they are often used to 'carry stuff out to sea' and you don't want to be ingesting any of that, unless you like the idea of having your stomach pumped! (Notice how many chemical plants are alongside rivers as well as the obvious sewage farms. Heavy metals and untreated sewage can both be extremely injurious to health!)

You can use Google Earth to search and zoom in on likely looking places. I wish they'd get a licence to show the geology info from the British Geological Survey too as that would be very handy. (You can get maps from them but they're a bit specialist and, therefore, pricey, so I haven't done so yet.)

If you want to try it indoors, you can get clay from PotClays. I usually use 1150 Modelling clay as it's very plastic and mixes to a gorgeous grey/white emulsion. If treated carefully, you can scoop up 70% of what you use into a bucket for re-use. (You need to do that to avoid blocking the drains anyway!) That also makes it very economical.

Hope that helps.

[Mike Nomic]

Well there's indoor mud (potters clay) - warm, do it when you fancy; but not cheap, and possibly with issues over cleaning up or disposing of the residue.

Outdoor mud is free, frequently with adjacent free clean-up water; but is seasonal.

Fields, etc can be stoney and contaminated with animal by-products. Rivers, etc can be smooth, but can still be contaminated; while sand or gravel quarry waste ponds are smooth and free from poo.

Take your pick.

Mike.

[Baron Morgan]

Excellent answers, thank you very much. I shall post some pics once the countryside has defrosted.

[Sidi]

Watch the mud by pine trees too, its a bit of a shock when you are not expecting it.
I was wearing jodhpurs and boots but the needles still got through

[wampony]

Just be careful if you use mud in field gateways because it can look deep and soft but beware--often there are stones or broken bricks deposited by farmers in gateways to try to stop vehicles sinking too deep, but when they are driven over they go into the mud and soft watery mud covers them.
I know this because I went for a slide into the mud one evening just as it was getting dark,hit my knee on the corner of a brick and ended up with my jodhpurs ripped open and also my knee, VERY painful and difficult to clean up.
A year or so later I worked on a farm for a while and my job one day was to build up the level of stone in gateways ready for getting tractors in for the harvest, so I found out why gateways are stony.

That being said, providing you scoop up the mud and don't roll in it you should be allright.

[Baron Morgan]

Ouch! The trick seems to be finding a good spot without any hazards rather than looking out for hazards!

[musikmann100]

Taking a previous post regarding quarries a bit further, I've done tons of research using all the satellite mapping websites and there are literally hundreds of ideal-looking quarries (usually sand & gravel extractions) in the UK.These type of sites,however, are also quite susceptible to change, hence why I use different satellite mapping sites and compare their results (It's quite apparent that some of the satellite imaging they use is pretty old, however, all seem to sporadically update different areas at different times so worth checking back every so often).
I've estimated there are over 100 sites within a 2 hour drive of me, which is a hell of a lot of very soft clay to choose from.
Some mapping sites use imagery that's 6-7 years old and for some gravel extraction sites that's half their lifetime so a site that may appear to have ideal-looking clay ponds may have completely dried-up,grown over and even been returned to farming use!
That said, if you compile a list of places to visit over a period of time this way, you should score at least a 50% success rate and often more....it's worked brilliantly for me anyway, I've found some amazing and very secluded soft claypit sites that no-one else has any business being anywhere near to be honest (outside of quarry operating times that is, of course!).

[Baron Morgan]

My clay pit exploration was less successful. I went to what looked like the best group of sights among the south Dartmoor pits, but while they looked inviting from a distance the mud was full of granite grit and no fun at all.

I eventually got my mud pictures at a site in Hertfordshire, reasonably secluded with several exceptionally glutinous pools. I'll post some pictures in a while.

[Lizzie_Claymore]

Which satellite sites do you use, musikman? I know of Google Earth but can't think of any others.

RE:Quarries. I'm not clear as to why there would be clay pools at sand and gravel quarries? Surely they'd be full of sand and gravel wouldn't they? Also, aren't these places all locked up and with cctv or security guards or whatever, or are they just left wide open 24/7?

C_W.