Just returned from my day in the woods with Dryad bushcraft and thought i'd share my experience with you all.
So....... After afew too many ales the night before
, i rocked up to the rendezvous (Gower heritage centre in Swansea) an hour too early. 
DOH!! however this did give me a chance to have a little explore and cler my head in time for the 9:30 start.
I was soon met by our instructor for the day, Heath Dawson, who immediately calmed any nerves i had and informed me that there was infact only two of us booked onto the course for the day which meant that we were going to get alot covered on a one to one level.
We took a short car ride and a 10 minute walk into the surrounding woodland and arrived at the basecamp, our home for the day. Heath immediately told us just to sit for afew minutes and adjust to surroundings and tune in to what was going on around us. once we were adjusted and settled we got down to the nitty gritty. He ran through the basics of correct knife handling, saw work and a little bit of first aid before we were sent to go and select some suitable hazel to make some basic tent pegs and get to grips with basic cutting techniques. I have been using knives for a while but it was still good to learn that i am using them correctly and efficiently.
Having mastered the basics it then started to get interesting. It was time to for feathersticks, and i was quite frankly pathetic!! Maybe it was my slight hangover or maybe i am just crap at feathersticks but either way i have alot of practicing to do and Heath was very helpful the whole time and managed to refrain from laughing at my efforts and gave me some useful advice to take away.
The dreaded feathersticks led us nicely into firelighting and we had a good play with numerous tinders and firelighting techniques and i made short work of this task as it was already something i was quite familiar with.
Fires lit and it was time for lunch, Heath had brought along some Mackeral, new potatoes and Haloumi cheese. He demonstrated how to gut and prepare the fish and showed us how to wrap them in Colts foot leaves. We were then going to bake them in little parcels in the embers of our fire. We duely did this and after around ten minutes in the embers we fried up the haloumi and boiled the potatoes in a billy can. The whole meal tasted fantastic . We appreciated the food alot more after the amount of effort preparing it all.
After a wash up we spent the afternoon looking at various natural shelters and he showed us a quick and easy method to rig up a tarp and hammock using afew simple hitches. After a final brew and a little bit of question time it was unfortunately time to leave the woods behind . The fires were thoroughly extinguished and the ashes scattered around.
Heath tested us a little on what we had learnt as we made our way back to the car and we said our goodbyes and thankyous for what was a truly wonderful, educational and fun day allround.
Overall i can thoroughly recommend Dryad Bushcraft. Good value for money, great tuition and in beautiful surroundings.
And a BIG thankyou to Heath who has more knowledge than i could ever hope to
learn.:You_Rock_
Hope you all enjoyed the short review. Here is a link www.Dryadbushcraft.co.uk
Dan
So....... After afew too many ales the night before
, i rocked up to the rendezvous (Gower heritage centre in Swansea) an hour too early. DOH!! however this did give me a chance to have a little explore and cler my head in time for the 9:30 start.I was soon met by our instructor for the day, Heath Dawson, who immediately calmed any nerves i had and informed me that there was infact only two of us booked onto the course for the day which meant that we were going to get alot covered on a one to one level.
We took a short car ride and a 10 minute walk into the surrounding woodland and arrived at the basecamp, our home for the day. Heath immediately told us just to sit for afew minutes and adjust to surroundings and tune in to what was going on around us. once we were adjusted and settled we got down to the nitty gritty. He ran through the basics of correct knife handling, saw work and a little bit of first aid before we were sent to go and select some suitable hazel to make some basic tent pegs and get to grips with basic cutting techniques. I have been using knives for a while but it was still good to learn that i am using them correctly and efficiently.
Having mastered the basics it then started to get interesting. It was time to for feathersticks, and i was quite frankly pathetic!! Maybe it was my slight hangover or maybe i am just crap at feathersticks but either way i have alot of practicing to do and Heath was very helpful the whole time and managed to refrain from laughing at my efforts and gave me some useful advice to take away.
The dreaded feathersticks led us nicely into firelighting and we had a good play with numerous tinders and firelighting techniques and i made short work of this task as it was already something i was quite familiar with.
Fires lit and it was time for lunch, Heath had brought along some Mackeral, new potatoes and Haloumi cheese. He demonstrated how to gut and prepare the fish and showed us how to wrap them in Colts foot leaves. We were then going to bake them in little parcels in the embers of our fire. We duely did this and after around ten minutes in the embers we fried up the haloumi and boiled the potatoes in a billy can. The whole meal tasted fantastic
. We appreciated the food alot more after the amount of effort preparing it all.After a wash up we spent the afternoon looking at various natural shelters and he showed us a quick and easy method to rig up a tarp and hammock using afew simple hitches. After a final brew and a little bit of question time it was unfortunately time to leave the woods behind
. The fires were thoroughly extinguished and the ashes scattered around.Heath tested us a little on what we had learnt as we made our way back to the car and we said our goodbyes and thankyous for what was a truly wonderful, educational and fun day allround.
Overall i can thoroughly recommend Dryad Bushcraft. Good value for money, great tuition and in beautiful surroundings.
And a BIG thankyou to Heath who has more knowledge than i could ever hope to
learn.:You_Rock_
Hope you all enjoyed the short review. Here is a link www.Dryadbushcraft.co.uk
Dan
