Memory Lane, what started it all off for you?

[Sleepy Weasel]

Does anyone out there remember sometime in the seventies a program that was on the tv, about teatime about survival? I think it was called 'How to Survive' and I think it was with Eddie McGee. I can remember as a kid watching it then as soon as it was finished tromping off to the local woods with my mates and trying out what we'd just seen

That's what started it all off for me, I was wondering what made all the other bushcrafters out there start up.

 

[dwardo]

I started out fishing, then night fishing, then night fishing under a tarp and cooking on an open fire and then stoppped taking fishing rods and started to just enjoy being outside

 

[Toadflax]

I caught the bug for 'living off the land' as I called it then after seeing a report on Nationwide (probably in 1975) where James Hogg (one of the reporters) agreed to be marooned on a Scottish Island and try to survive for 14 days.

I think I then saw Food for Free advertised in something like the WWF Christmas Catalogue and was given it for Christmas. I read it avidly but never really did much more myself, apart from nibbling the odd leaf that I recognised as edible.

I've watched Ray Mears on and off but his recent Wild Food program (January 2007) triggered the interest again and I thought that bushcraft would be a good thing to get into when I retire, but then thought that this could be 15-20 years away, so why not start now.

I trawled the internet for sites on wild food foraging for a few weeks and then stumbled across BCUK - and haven't looked back since. I keep trying to get onto Moots and other meetings, but every time I want to go on something, there already seems to be something booked in my calendar.

So my next challenge is to get to a meet!


Geoff

 

[locum76]

memory lane is - playing in the woods with my brother when we were kids and doing anything we could outside, for the first 17 years of our lives. I lost touch with the outdoors when i moved to Edinburgh to study (even though i was doing an environmental degree). Now i've moved back to the sticks, i work outdoors and i'm getting it all back

edit: TV never inspired me to do anything at all apart from watch more tv. my current outdoor renaissance has been enhanced by putting all our tellies in the bin or a cupboard.

 

[Minotaur]

Scouts.

From 8 till about 18, I just was never home, almost always out there doing something. Maybe not bushcrafty, but spent a good amount of time out there.

The good old days.

Looks around, sheepishly.

I surpose, I have to give a certain amount of credit to the survival movement that was around for a while. Espically, Survival weaponary and techniques, the magazine. Still have a lot of their articles to sort thought, wished I had keep the mags now, but was young and stupid.

 

[Radix lecti]

Hello
The 1983 reprint of No need to die by Eddie Mcgee started me off on this road , i was also influenced by the late 1980s magazine Survival weaponary and techniques (S.W.A.T)
of which i still have the first 30 copies in my possession somewhere. Then doing a few survival courses with the military was pure bliss.
Regards
Darren

 

[Fin]

The start was wide games at my boarding school (10 year olds out all weekend with no supervision and very little instruction - try doing that today!). This led to a love of outdoors in general.

A jungle survival course in Belize, 17 years ago, made me see the outdoors in a different way, introduced me to the concept and etiquette of hunting game and also made me appreciate the value of training.

Ray Mears programmes, books such as "Woodcraft and Camping" by Nessmuk and not least, this excellent website - have all served to educate and excite.

 

[commandocal]

I could start with, When i was in the SAS we had to learn how to eat each other during long OP's.....or, i first got into bushcraft and camping rough after i stole a car and then burnt it out on the field, but insted of running i sat down next to the burning inferno and enjoyed a nice brew

But both would be lies

 

[John Fenna]

Oh 'eck - I may be taking kids from Grimsby to Africa on exped next year - are they all like you? No disrespect - you could think of it as a positive thing.....

It was Enid Blyton got me interested - bunch of kids run away and live on an island to avoid nasty step parent or something. Willow huts, wild thyme in the grass idylic life....I was hooked!
As for SWAT mag......
And I know coz I used to write for them!
Ah.....simpler days then.....

 

[BlackPacker]

I've seen posts like this before, and everytime, I'm kind of stumped. I mean, (as I may have mentioned here) I still have my first backpack. It fits me now, but my dad used it to carry me around in the desert, prospecting. I got my first (and only) rattlesnake bite when I was 8, though it was a surface bite through the shoes and I would have been fine it it had not been for an idiot with a snake bite kit. By that time, I was already at home in the woods. Spent a few years away, but I'm back now and everything is fine again.

 

[The Joker]

My biggest influence into the big out doors and the one who showed me how to enjoy it and not be afraid and still I have the fondest memories of all those times is....................MY DAD! The Worlds Best

 

[Greg]

I went to boarding school, all around the area was woods, farm land and a decent river and when I was 12 or 13yrs old my Dad, who was a Combat Survival Instructor in the Army, bought me a copy of the SAS Survival Handbook and that was it and I haven't stopped since, even my English Oral exam at school was on Survival and I scored quite well..

 

[spamel]

My dad also got me into the outdoors by taking both my older brother and myself on our first outdoor trip when we moved to Portsmouth. We went down the creek as we all called it, and walked around to a pub, carried on a bit more and then started to construct a bed. First off, we put down long straight logs, then some thinner branches on top, then topped it off with bracken and grass. We had a blanket over the top of us and our rain jackets over that in case it rained. Dad had a sleeping bag on the floor. It was a very comfortable night for us but Dad suffered as he had a big stone under him that kept digging into his back!

The next morning I saw my first fox, in fact there were two of them. I was probably five or six years old. I still remember that with vivid clarity.

 

[commandocal]

Sorry John i really must stop drinking, ignore my posts from night time or just delete them whatever Alot of kids are really good from here but obviously their is the "areas" where they are little ********

 

[john scrivy]

what influenced me to love the outdoors -well if it was TV I enjoyed a progg called out of town with Jack hargreeves-I remember another progg called Robinson crusoe it was french but very badley dubbed I aquired them on dvd resently -Apart from TV I lived in the quiet Essex village known as Battlesbridge as a boy a favourite pasttime as a lad was to climb aboard my little wooden dingy with a small out board my brother and a mate and go with the out going tide down to burnham anchor up for a few hours fishing any that was cought was lunch that day we would start making our way back pull the boat up on the river bank get a fire going from drift wood and cook lunch it could be baked beans cooked in the tin or sausage on sticks or if we were lucky fish or eel -Now back on dry land it was always a treet usually the last week of our school summer holidays to go scrumping for what ever we could get ie Black berries wild rhubarb Apples from someones orchard and wild plums I dont know think I was influenced I just grew up with doing such stuff and have allways loved it This is my 50th post hope you dont find it to boring

 

[woodstock]

Does anyone out there remember sometime in the seventies a program that was on the tv, about teatime about survival? I think it was called 'How to Survive' and I think it was with Eddie McGee. I can remember as a kid watching it then as soon as it was finished tromping off to the local woods with my mates and trying out what we'd just seen

I met Eddie McGee a no of times up to 82 when he was doing some escape and evasion training to Recce units getting battle ready for the Falklands he was a member of the troop one of the lads...

 

[Sleepy Weasel]

Thanks for the replies guys, thinking back about this I was also into the Swallows and Amazons books by Arthur Ramsone too, but Dad wouldn't let me alone on his dingy, besides, none of my friends were into that kind of thing, too busy with Showaddywaddy on the TV.
I didn't know that there was a book by Eddie McGee, I'll look out for it. My first book on survival was How to Survive by Brian Hildreth, I think he was Australian or from New Zealand and a survival instructor for them. I was lucky enough to get an original survival manual for US pilots during the war from a family friend, even had Inuit phrases in the back, just in case!
Someone mentioned that their Dad took them outdoors, we did that kind of thing as a family out into the woods, Dad would go fishing and me and my brother would get into trouble in the woods(once got the whole of my face painted with bilberry juice, which took a bit of scrubbing to get off!)
Now that I'm a dad myself I hope to get the boy interested in being outdoors, but he's only 2 at the moment. We've been out for a walk in the woods and had a campfire and so far he seems to enjoy it, we'll have to wait and see.

 

[snoop Ex member]

i started by dossing in back yard, then the local park, when i was 10-11,
early teens i hung around with an older lad & got into poaching, & found hiding in brambles or dog roses,gorse bushes,easier than running.
i don't do poaching no more, just got to like being outside.

 

[Nichola]

Oh 'eck - I may be taking kids from Grimsby to Africa on exped next year - are they all like you? No disrespect - you could think of it as a positive thing.....

It was Enid Blyton got me interested - bunch of kids run away and live on an island to avoid nasty step parent or something. Willow huts, wild thyme in the grass idylic life....I was hooked!
As for SWAT mag......
And I know coz I used to write for them!
Ah.....simpler days then.....

I'm afraid it was Enid Blyton for me too!!! The children of cherry tree farm. These kids lived in the middle of the city, no grass, no woods. Then they spent the hols with their aunty (i think) on a huge farm. There was this 'wild man' in the book who lived in his own-built natural shelter and knew everything about 'living in the wild'. I lived in a city pretty similar when i was growing up and living on cherry tree farm sounded like heaven!
Lucky for me i married someone who has an interest in bushcraft too!!!

 

[rich59]

What started it for me?

Two things:-

An experience - finding I loved being among tall, woodland trees

A question - do we need matches?