I posted the following article on a wee blog I write, but figured it would be seen by a lot more interested parties on BCUK than it would there.
The article is a review of a course I attended run by Joe O'Leary's Wilderness Survival Skills outfit. I hope it's a help to anyone thinking of attending one of Joe's courses.
Wilderness Survival Skills
I rolled onto my side in a contented sleepy daze. It was dark and my arms were trapped, cocooned in my sleeping bag. Something clicked in the back of my head - I wasn't in my usual bed.
The crinkle of leaf litter as I moved started more neurons firing. I lay still, my weight on my left shoulder, looking along the ground. The murky grey shapes of twigs, fallen bracken and dropped leaves quickly dissipated into the black of night as a memory of where I was started to creep into the forefront of my consciousness.
Something stirred a little distance away. There was a ponderous scurrying amongst the dried out foliage. It came towards me then paused and moved away. Probably a badger I thought as my lugubrious brain remembered I was lying on the bare forest floor of a beautiful deciduous woodland in Wiltshire. My tent fly-sheet was pitched a short distance away, but on such a lovely night I had decided to sleep out in the open with just my bivy bag as a cover.
Some primal gene registered where I was - amongst the natural habitat of our country's ancestors - and spread a sense of 'homeliness' and well-being throughout my sleep-addled body. I quickly drifted back off into unconsciousness, dreaming of the day to come and the evening I had already spent in this wonderful woodland.
I had arrived the evening before. After expecting to turn up late, I ended up being the first to arrive; the trip up from Cornwall was a lot quicker than I or the AA routefinder had anticipated. I waited on the edge of the woodland I had been directed to and was soon met by some of the 10 people in total who were booked onto the course that weekend. Brief introductions were made and a few nervous Rambo / Ray Mears jokes were bandied around before we were met by our primary instructor and founder of Wilderness Survival Skills, Joe O'Leary.
Yes, Joe served 8 years in the military (so it says in his bio - he never brought it up at the weekend) and he's a burly bloke; but you can throw away all preconceptions of a macho redneck survivalist. It was obvious that Joe is a mild-mannered, modest and quiet guy and we were all quickly at ease in his company. He gave us the obligatory safety brief as we took a slow meander for about a kilometre into the woods, whereupon, as the sun set behind the trees, we were greeted by a spirit-lifting and warming site... a beautiful and homely camp beneath a huge parachute in a dappled clearing with a camp fire glowing and the smell of chilli wafting from a dutch oven in the embers.
OK, so I need a camera tripod. This was the warming woodland camp that greeted us on our arrival
Our second instructor for the weekend was busy by the fire, looking after the steaming dutch oven full of chilli. He introduced himself as Glenn and so our weekend's instruction began. It was to be a jam-packed weekend from here-on in, starting with Glenn showing us around the site (including the toilet - known to you and me as a trench) and getting our tents or bashas pitched in the fading daylight. There was some respite as we ate the delicious chilli and sat and chatted amongst ourselves, learning a bit more about the people we would be spending the next couple of days with. Before long, it was time to turn in, ready to arise early the next day to crack on with the fun. It was such a lovely evening that I rued the idea of disappearing under my flysheet, so I pulled my thermarest, sleeping bag and bivy bag out from under the canvas and bedded down amongst the leaves. I stared sleepily at the glowing parachute in the distance which dimmed as the fire died down and before long was drifting merrily away to sleep...
After the first night under canvas (or not in my case), the primary goal for the Saturday was to construct a natural shelter which we would sleep in that night. However, time spent hastily putting the shelter together was interspersed with a host of other activities. After breakfast and a brew Glenn gave us our tools for the weekend, a Mora Clipper knife and a Bahco Laplander saw. He took us through the safe use of the tools and showed us how best to coppice the hazel that was abundant in the woods. I had brought the knife I made so mostly used that instead of the Mora Clipper. To practice the use of the tools we each made two different styles of tent peg and the components needed to penass fish (which would come in handy later on).
After this Joe showed us the different types of natural shelter that could be constructed, using some miniature examples (complete with an actual GI Joe for scale!); after which we were left to build whichever style we liked. I'm a big fan of sleeping in the open air, so I opted for a 'lean-to' shelter, with just one wall positioned to block the prevailing weather. I've always considered the lean-to to be the qunitessential 'bushcraft' shelter, a step up from the usual leaf-litter kennel (don't ask me why). Also, for some reason, seeing Ray Mears on one of his shows sleeping in one in the Arctic north, with a log heat reflector and long-log fire has always stuck with me. I had the romantic notion of recreating this for my night out, despite the fact it was a balmy September day!
The beginnings of my lean-to shelter. My wooly waistcoat from India hangs from one side. Glenn had waistcoat envy all weekend
Lunch was fish and chips... campfire style. Whilst Joe roasted potato wedges and herbs in a dutch oven on the campfire, Glenn showed us how to penass fish with some rainbow trout that were brought in. This involved filleting the fish in exactly the same way I do it with a knife, but using just your fingers and keeping the skin behind the backbone intact. The filleted fish is then spreadeagled and fixed into a de-barked, split green hazel 'clamp' and clove-hitched off with willow suckers. These were positioned round the campfire to cook whilst we carried on with a bit more of our shelters.
Trout, penassed and ready to cook
Chatting round the campfire as lunch cooks
After a late lunch we went on a wild foraging walk and were shown trees, plants and fungi that were useful for food and other things - cramp balls and honeysuckle bark for firelighting, St. John's Wort and Wound Wort for healing wounds, stinging nettles for food and cordage, birch polypore for stropping knives and using like a plaster and a host of other flora.
Wild foraging walk
Glenn explaining the uses of honeysuckle bark
Glenn telling us about St. John's Wort
After a bit more shelter building it was back to more instruction. This time learning how to skin, butcher and de-bone a rabbit. It had been a long day already but we were still packing more in! It was dark but we carried on none-the-less and soon we were sat around the campfire again, enjoying a delicious rabbit risotto.
After such a jam-packed day I was feeling pretty tired, but the risotto must have given me a second wind as myself and another lad (Toby) decided we were going to have a crack at getting a fire going in front of our lean-tos (I think it was midnight by this point!). With a small blaze going in front of my heat reflector I was able to sleep quite happily in the lean-to without even a sleeping bag.
Home sweet home for the night
Toby enjoying the warmth of his campfire
After a minor complaint from one of the other members of the party about the fire being noisy (seriously!), we left them to burn out. Without the fire I had to get into my sleeping bag and drifted off to sleep again. When I woke up it was pouring with rain, but the shelter held out and I dozed on until almost 7am.
The weather really did play ball all weekend... it was lovely and dry during the days, but peed down during Saturday night just so we could test our shelters! After a bit of mizzle on the Sunday morning it quickly dried up into another nice day. It was straight back into the instruction though and while a full fried breakfast was cooked over the campfire Glenn showed us the nitty gritty of knife sharpening. I have my own set of waterstones and have sharpened knives and plane irons aplenty, but it was still interesting to pick up tips from someone else.
Brew time!
Despite it being the last day Joe and Glenn still somehow managed to cram in plenty of teaching. Joe showed us a huge array of different traps which were fun to see set off. Glenn then took us through a quick and easy way of de-breasting a pigeon. Whilst he disappeared to cook this over the campfire, Joe took us and showed us different methods of fire-lighting and how to lay a fire. The most impressive display of the weekend for me, was watching Joe skilfully carve a feather-stick so fine that he was able to light it from sparks alone.
Joe describing the many different ways of starting a fire
Joe demonstrating the use of a firesteel
We took a break for lunch, which was a really tasty dish of pigeon and ratatouille in pita pockets with creme fraiche and paprika. Afterwards we had a go at starting our own fires. As I had already lit fires from sparks using a firesteel, Joe challenged me to light one using an old-school flint and steel. The trick here was to take a piece of well-prepared charcloth and hold it on the flint so you could strike falling sparks straight onto it. The charcloth successfully lights with even cold sparks - I was surprised how readily you could get an ember. The first ember didn't take in the tinder bundle so I passed it to Toby and he was soon able to get an ember too. This time it took and he blew it to flame and established a nice fire.
Toby striking sparks using a flint and steel
Toby blowing an ember to flame
Toby's fire!
My only regret of the weekend was not getting a chance to try the bow-drill method of firelighting, but we just didn't have time! As it was, Joe graciously allowed us to run over by a couple of hours. When it was finally time to leave I felt a pang of sadness that it was over. In just a couple of days I had begun to feel at home in these woods and knew I was going to miss them. That really was the thing I had come to learn and experience - not how to survive in a tricky situation, but how to thrive and be comfortable in the outdoors using its natural resources. Joe and Glenn certainly made us feel comfortable and imparted a huge amount of knowledge gleaned from their own experiences on how to thrive and use those resources.
And I know I'm only going to miss those woods until the next time I visit them on another of Joe's courses. Because I will surely be going back.
The course I attended was the Bushcraft Weekend, which cost £185. It's well worth the money - I thoroughly recommend it!
Joe had no idea I was a blogger or that I was writing a review of the weekend so I received no special treatment or discounts.
The article is a review of a course I attended run by Joe O'Leary's Wilderness Survival Skills outfit. I hope it's a help to anyone thinking of attending one of Joe's courses.
Wilderness Survival Skills
I rolled onto my side in a contented sleepy daze. It was dark and my arms were trapped, cocooned in my sleeping bag. Something clicked in the back of my head - I wasn't in my usual bed.
The crinkle of leaf litter as I moved started more neurons firing. I lay still, my weight on my left shoulder, looking along the ground. The murky grey shapes of twigs, fallen bracken and dropped leaves quickly dissipated into the black of night as a memory of where I was started to creep into the forefront of my consciousness.
Something stirred a little distance away. There was a ponderous scurrying amongst the dried out foliage. It came towards me then paused and moved away. Probably a badger I thought as my lugubrious brain remembered I was lying on the bare forest floor of a beautiful deciduous woodland in Wiltshire. My tent fly-sheet was pitched a short distance away, but on such a lovely night I had decided to sleep out in the open with just my bivy bag as a cover.
Some primal gene registered where I was - amongst the natural habitat of our country's ancestors - and spread a sense of 'homeliness' and well-being throughout my sleep-addled body. I quickly drifted back off into unconsciousness, dreaming of the day to come and the evening I had already spent in this wonderful woodland.
I had arrived the evening before. After expecting to turn up late, I ended up being the first to arrive; the trip up from Cornwall was a lot quicker than I or the AA routefinder had anticipated. I waited on the edge of the woodland I had been directed to and was soon met by some of the 10 people in total who were booked onto the course that weekend. Brief introductions were made and a few nervous Rambo / Ray Mears jokes were bandied around before we were met by our primary instructor and founder of Wilderness Survival Skills, Joe O'Leary.
Yes, Joe served 8 years in the military (so it says in his bio - he never brought it up at the weekend) and he's a burly bloke; but you can throw away all preconceptions of a macho redneck survivalist. It was obvious that Joe is a mild-mannered, modest and quiet guy and we were all quickly at ease in his company. He gave us the obligatory safety brief as we took a slow meander for about a kilometre into the woods, whereupon, as the sun set behind the trees, we were greeted by a spirit-lifting and warming site... a beautiful and homely camp beneath a huge parachute in a dappled clearing with a camp fire glowing and the smell of chilli wafting from a dutch oven in the embers.
OK, so I need a camera tripod. This was the warming woodland camp that greeted us on our arrival
Our second instructor for the weekend was busy by the fire, looking after the steaming dutch oven full of chilli. He introduced himself as Glenn and so our weekend's instruction began. It was to be a jam-packed weekend from here-on in, starting with Glenn showing us around the site (including the toilet - known to you and me as a trench) and getting our tents or bashas pitched in the fading daylight. There was some respite as we ate the delicious chilli and sat and chatted amongst ourselves, learning a bit more about the people we would be spending the next couple of days with. Before long, it was time to turn in, ready to arise early the next day to crack on with the fun. It was such a lovely evening that I rued the idea of disappearing under my flysheet, so I pulled my thermarest, sleeping bag and bivy bag out from under the canvas and bedded down amongst the leaves. I stared sleepily at the glowing parachute in the distance which dimmed as the fire died down and before long was drifting merrily away to sleep...
After the first night under canvas (or not in my case), the primary goal for the Saturday was to construct a natural shelter which we would sleep in that night. However, time spent hastily putting the shelter together was interspersed with a host of other activities. After breakfast and a brew Glenn gave us our tools for the weekend, a Mora Clipper knife and a Bahco Laplander saw. He took us through the safe use of the tools and showed us how best to coppice the hazel that was abundant in the woods. I had brought the knife I made so mostly used that instead of the Mora Clipper. To practice the use of the tools we each made two different styles of tent peg and the components needed to penass fish (which would come in handy later on).
After this Joe showed us the different types of natural shelter that could be constructed, using some miniature examples (complete with an actual GI Joe for scale!); after which we were left to build whichever style we liked. I'm a big fan of sleeping in the open air, so I opted for a 'lean-to' shelter, with just one wall positioned to block the prevailing weather. I've always considered the lean-to to be the qunitessential 'bushcraft' shelter, a step up from the usual leaf-litter kennel (don't ask me why). Also, for some reason, seeing Ray Mears on one of his shows sleeping in one in the Arctic north, with a log heat reflector and long-log fire has always stuck with me. I had the romantic notion of recreating this for my night out, despite the fact it was a balmy September day!
The beginnings of my lean-to shelter. My wooly waistcoat from India hangs from one side. Glenn had waistcoat envy all weekend
Lunch was fish and chips... campfire style. Whilst Joe roasted potato wedges and herbs in a dutch oven on the campfire, Glenn showed us how to penass fish with some rainbow trout that were brought in. This involved filleting the fish in exactly the same way I do it with a knife, but using just your fingers and keeping the skin behind the backbone intact. The filleted fish is then spreadeagled and fixed into a de-barked, split green hazel 'clamp' and clove-hitched off with willow suckers. These were positioned round the campfire to cook whilst we carried on with a bit more of our shelters.
Trout, penassed and ready to cook
Chatting round the campfire as lunch cooks
After a late lunch we went on a wild foraging walk and were shown trees, plants and fungi that were useful for food and other things - cramp balls and honeysuckle bark for firelighting, St. John's Wort and Wound Wort for healing wounds, stinging nettles for food and cordage, birch polypore for stropping knives and using like a plaster and a host of other flora.
Wild foraging walk
Glenn explaining the uses of honeysuckle bark
Glenn telling us about St. John's Wort
After a bit more shelter building it was back to more instruction. This time learning how to skin, butcher and de-bone a rabbit. It had been a long day already but we were still packing more in! It was dark but we carried on none-the-less and soon we were sat around the campfire again, enjoying a delicious rabbit risotto.
After such a jam-packed day I was feeling pretty tired, but the risotto must have given me a second wind as myself and another lad (Toby) decided we were going to have a crack at getting a fire going in front of our lean-tos (I think it was midnight by this point!). With a small blaze going in front of my heat reflector I was able to sleep quite happily in the lean-to without even a sleeping bag.
Home sweet home for the night
Toby enjoying the warmth of his campfire
After a minor complaint from one of the other members of the party about the fire being noisy (seriously!), we left them to burn out. Without the fire I had to get into my sleeping bag and drifted off to sleep again. When I woke up it was pouring with rain, but the shelter held out and I dozed on until almost 7am.
The weather really did play ball all weekend... it was lovely and dry during the days, but peed down during Saturday night just so we could test our shelters! After a bit of mizzle on the Sunday morning it quickly dried up into another nice day. It was straight back into the instruction though and while a full fried breakfast was cooked over the campfire Glenn showed us the nitty gritty of knife sharpening. I have my own set of waterstones and have sharpened knives and plane irons aplenty, but it was still interesting to pick up tips from someone else.
Brew time!
Despite it being the last day Joe and Glenn still somehow managed to cram in plenty of teaching. Joe showed us a huge array of different traps which were fun to see set off. Glenn then took us through a quick and easy way of de-breasting a pigeon. Whilst he disappeared to cook this over the campfire, Joe took us and showed us different methods of fire-lighting and how to lay a fire. The most impressive display of the weekend for me, was watching Joe skilfully carve a feather-stick so fine that he was able to light it from sparks alone.
Joe describing the many different ways of starting a fire
Joe demonstrating the use of a firesteel
We took a break for lunch, which was a really tasty dish of pigeon and ratatouille in pita pockets with creme fraiche and paprika. Afterwards we had a go at starting our own fires. As I had already lit fires from sparks using a firesteel, Joe challenged me to light one using an old-school flint and steel. The trick here was to take a piece of well-prepared charcloth and hold it on the flint so you could strike falling sparks straight onto it. The charcloth successfully lights with even cold sparks - I was surprised how readily you could get an ember. The first ember didn't take in the tinder bundle so I passed it to Toby and he was soon able to get an ember too. This time it took and he blew it to flame and established a nice fire.
Toby striking sparks using a flint and steel
Toby blowing an ember to flame
Toby's fire!
My only regret of the weekend was not getting a chance to try the bow-drill method of firelighting, but we just didn't have time! As it was, Joe graciously allowed us to run over by a couple of hours. When it was finally time to leave I felt a pang of sadness that it was over. In just a couple of days I had begun to feel at home in these woods and knew I was going to miss them. That really was the thing I had come to learn and experience - not how to survive in a tricky situation, but how to thrive and be comfortable in the outdoors using its natural resources. Joe and Glenn certainly made us feel comfortable and imparted a huge amount of knowledge gleaned from their own experiences on how to thrive and use those resources.
And I know I'm only going to miss those woods until the next time I visit them on another of Joe's courses. Because I will surely be going back.
The course I attended was the Bushcraft Weekend, which cost £185. It's well worth the money - I thoroughly recommend it!
Joe had no idea I was a blogger or that I was writing a review of the weekend so I received no special treatment or discounts.
