For the last few weeks, my partner and i have been attending the Secret Mushroom Club, run by Fred from Wild Side Of Life.
Fred offers a whole range of courses from foraging to mushroom ID, game prep and basic bushcraft courses.
We found him as he was recommended on the BBCs Country File website and, i have to say, it has been a superb 5 days.
The course is based around the Wiltshire area, the savernake forest and the surrounding area.
Fred runs the course over a period of 6 weeks, offering 5 x 4 hour sessions (when the weather is good, more like 6hrs) on a Sunday afternoon. I really liked this format as it gives you a really good overview of the development of the mushrooms and allows you to see a much broader range of fungi for ID.
The course is predominately aimed towards mushrooms for eating but along the way you learn how to identify a very broad range of fungi, edible, medicinal and poisonous.
Fred is a very knowledgeable fellow and, although not a mycologist but a botanist, he is very competent and it is obvious that this really is a passion for him.
At the beginning, i had a very limited mushroom knowledge (just a few of the well known basics) and my partner had none. Now, we both feel very confident in moving ahead in our fungi identification and, although we both know that we have barely scratched the surface, we are happy in knowing what to look for and how to find our way through the differing stages of ID.
The 5 day course cost us £100 each, which,i have to say, reached its moneys worth by the end of day 1, so remarkably good value.
I would really highly recommend this course for anybody with an interest in Mushroom ID (and i really would recommend that everybody with an interest go on a course). it was highly informative and great fun to boot.
Heres a pic of our last Haul.
Fred offers a whole range of courses from foraging to mushroom ID, game prep and basic bushcraft courses.
We found him as he was recommended on the BBCs Country File website and, i have to say, it has been a superb 5 days.
The course is based around the Wiltshire area, the savernake forest and the surrounding area.
Fred runs the course over a period of 6 weeks, offering 5 x 4 hour sessions (when the weather is good, more like 6hrs) on a Sunday afternoon. I really liked this format as it gives you a really good overview of the development of the mushrooms and allows you to see a much broader range of fungi for ID.
The course is predominately aimed towards mushrooms for eating but along the way you learn how to identify a very broad range of fungi, edible, medicinal and poisonous.
Fred is a very knowledgeable fellow and, although not a mycologist but a botanist, he is very competent and it is obvious that this really is a passion for him.
At the beginning, i had a very limited mushroom knowledge (just a few of the well known basics) and my partner had none. Now, we both feel very confident in moving ahead in our fungi identification and, although we both know that we have barely scratched the surface, we are happy in knowing what to look for and how to find our way through the differing stages of ID.
The 5 day course cost us £100 each, which,i have to say, reached its moneys worth by the end of day 1, so remarkably good value.
I would really highly recommend this course for anybody with an interest in Mushroom ID (and i really would recommend that everybody with an interest go on a course). it was highly informative and great fun to boot.
Heres a pic of our last Haul.
Let it settle properly into the old grey matter kind of thing 
