I have just spent a very enjoyable and challenging weekend over in Essex, near Chelmsford, participating in the weekend long advanced bushcraft course known as the "Tenderfoot" course run by Bearclaw Bushcraft.
I've attended one other course run by Bearclaw and was very impressed by both the knowledge and the instruction methods of Gary, JP and Steve. There passion towards the subject they teach is very evident and they manage to teach in a very fun and friendly manner. So I was very much looking forward to returning and consolidating what I've been learning and practicing since I was with them last year.
The idea of the course was to make its students realise that there is little need to have the dependence on all our modern day gadgetry to be able to live a self-sustaining and comfortable existence alongside nature. The idea being that we would carry very little else other than a knife, billy tin and a blanket. However, this wasn't a survival course, this was about stepping into the lifestyle of our hunter-gatherer ancestor's way of life.
The students were to meet at 20:00 on the Friday and after a few delays with the usual gridlock around the M25 :aargh4: the majority of the students had assembled, with just a couple of stragglers still to fight their way through the traffic. Fortunately (for me anyway
) I had expected as much and had made my way down earlier in the day and had spent much of the afternoon exploring a handful of the local bridleways and villages.
We set camp up for the evening and had an informal chat around the fire with a few introductions between the students and the instructors whilst we tucked into what was to be our last "supermarket" meal of the weekend. With a lot to cover over the weekend we were set for an early start on Saturday morning so we all headed off to get our heads down for the night. After an afternoon full of walking, a belly full of grub and the evening calls of several Tawny Owls and I was out like a light.
I awoke in the morning, after a very pleasant night’s sleep, full of excitement for what the weekend had in store for us. We had a quick breakfast of Muesli and the course then commenced.
Now I'm not going to go into depth of what the course covered, how we had to go about things or the challenges we were set, but I will say that it fully explored our existing knowledge while also expanding upon it and throwing in several hurdles that had to be overcome by using a few new skills.
We were broken into groups and within those groups had about an hour’s instruction on a few subjects that would make the rest of the weekend either a success or a failure. Afterwards we set off to 3 separate locations within the wood basically with just the clothes we had on, a knife, billy tin, and our blankets where we were then left to our own devices (with observation and a little bit of supervision here and there) for the remainder of the weekend. Here we obviously then encountered a number of essential tasks ahead of us such as to build a suitable shelter for the group, the collection of water and food, and the lighting of a fire for warmth throughout the night as well as for purifying water and cooking.
A number of these challenges, which might have been simple at other times of the year or in other locations, meant we had to really think outside the box on a number of occasions and really call upon our knowledge rather than be able to use an item of kit to solve the problem.
The first day certainly wasn't an easy path forward but our moral and motivation as a team held relatively strong and we pushed on throughout the day.
As well as the tasks that just the requirement to survive had set upon us we also had a few challenges that were given to us by the instructors that we had to complete throughout the course of the weekend, which also stretched our knowledge base and got us thinking beyond the barriers that our normal routines have got ourselves into.
By the close of the second day I would honestly say that I didn't want to leave to go back to base camp, yet alone head back home. We had started to eat relatively well, had started to produce enough water to keep going without problems and our camp was really starting to feel like a home in itself rather than a temporary shelter to fend off a survival situation.
Of course things could have been very different if we hadn't had the weather on our-side to begin with, or indeed if one or more of us had been injured, and it sank in that its all very well to be able to "talk the talk", read all the books and have a practical understanding of really living off the land. Its not until you begin to "walk the walk" do you realise what it’s truly like to be fully dependant upon your knowledge and surroundings and how easy and quickly your good fortune can begin to disappear, another reason why I am also heading off on Bearclaw’s “Fasach Ile” course next year to further build upon these skills and put them to the test.
I've attended one other course run by Bearclaw and was very impressed by both the knowledge and the instruction methods of Gary, JP and Steve. There passion towards the subject they teach is very evident and they manage to teach in a very fun and friendly manner. So I was very much looking forward to returning and consolidating what I've been learning and practicing since I was with them last year.
The idea of the course was to make its students realise that there is little need to have the dependence on all our modern day gadgetry to be able to live a self-sustaining and comfortable existence alongside nature. The idea being that we would carry very little else other than a knife, billy tin and a blanket. However, this wasn't a survival course, this was about stepping into the lifestyle of our hunter-gatherer ancestor's way of life.
The students were to meet at 20:00 on the Friday and after a few delays with the usual gridlock around the M25 :aargh4: the majority of the students had assembled, with just a couple of stragglers still to fight their way through the traffic. Fortunately (for me anyway
) I had expected as much and had made my way down earlier in the day and had spent much of the afternoon exploring a handful of the local bridleways and villages.We set camp up for the evening and had an informal chat around the fire with a few introductions between the students and the instructors whilst we tucked into what was to be our last "supermarket" meal of the weekend. With a lot to cover over the weekend we were set for an early start on Saturday morning so we all headed off to get our heads down for the night. After an afternoon full of walking, a belly full of grub and the evening calls of several Tawny Owls and I was out like a light.
I awoke in the morning, after a very pleasant night’s sleep, full of excitement for what the weekend had in store for us. We had a quick breakfast of Muesli and the course then commenced.
Now I'm not going to go into depth of what the course covered, how we had to go about things or the challenges we were set, but I will say that it fully explored our existing knowledge while also expanding upon it and throwing in several hurdles that had to be overcome by using a few new skills.
We were broken into groups and within those groups had about an hour’s instruction on a few subjects that would make the rest of the weekend either a success or a failure. Afterwards we set off to 3 separate locations within the wood basically with just the clothes we had on, a knife, billy tin, and our blankets where we were then left to our own devices (with observation and a little bit of supervision here and there) for the remainder of the weekend. Here we obviously then encountered a number of essential tasks ahead of us such as to build a suitable shelter for the group, the collection of water and food, and the lighting of a fire for warmth throughout the night as well as for purifying water and cooking.
A number of these challenges, which might have been simple at other times of the year or in other locations, meant we had to really think outside the box on a number of occasions and really call upon our knowledge rather than be able to use an item of kit to solve the problem.
The first day certainly wasn't an easy path forward but our moral and motivation as a team held relatively strong and we pushed on throughout the day.
As well as the tasks that just the requirement to survive had set upon us we also had a few challenges that were given to us by the instructors that we had to complete throughout the course of the weekend, which also stretched our knowledge base and got us thinking beyond the barriers that our normal routines have got ourselves into.
By the close of the second day I would honestly say that I didn't want to leave to go back to base camp, yet alone head back home. We had started to eat relatively well, had started to produce enough water to keep going without problems and our camp was really starting to feel like a home in itself rather than a temporary shelter to fend off a survival situation.
Of course things could have been very different if we hadn't had the weather on our-side to begin with, or indeed if one or more of us had been injured, and it sank in that its all very well to be able to "talk the talk", read all the books and have a practical understanding of really living off the land. Its not until you begin to "walk the walk" do you realise what it’s truly like to be fully dependant upon your knowledge and surroundings and how easy and quickly your good fortune can begin to disappear, another reason why I am also heading off on Bearclaw’s “Fasach Ile” course next year to further build upon these skills and put them to the test.
