August is the season for collecting thistles seed heads to use as an excellent tinder for firemaking. The flowers die back and the seed heads burst out in warm weather then disburse in the wind. There are lots of types of thistle in Britain; like Marsh Thistle and Creeping Thistle but one of the best …
Category: Bushcraft
Bushcraft Week with Thornlie Primary
Definitely one of the highlights of 2018 for me will be Thornlie Primary's bushcraft week. Me, Kenny Noble and Jean Ewen spent three days last week running a range of bushcraft activities for the entire school, working with three classes a day. We had so much fun creating, building, cooking, learning, playing and sharing.... with …
Stone and Wool Pendant Necklace
I was up in Shetland last week guiding for About Argyll Walking Holidays and taking inspiration from all the beautiful shells, pebbles, driftwood and other natural materials you find whilst out hiking I decided to make a stone and wool pendant necklace. I am a bit of a magpie when it comes to pebbles and …
Making a Woven Coiled Basket
Last week I did a 4 day trek from Dunkeld to Blair Atholl, supervising a Duke of Edinburgh’s Award expedition group. On the way I set myself the challenge of making a woven coiled basket. This type of basket involves threading coils of plant material together in a spiral. It leads to a basket that …
Tree Bud Photo Guide
In March, trees in Scotland start to come back into leaf. Now's a good time to study tree buds as they get bigger and begin to open up. Hawthorn and elder are amongst the first and oak and ash among the last to come into leaf. All of these photos were taken in Mugdock Country …
Snowy Bushcraft Course
Arriving at Wiston Lodge on Saturday morning there was a lot of snow, about 40cm of deep, powdery, fluffy snow. This was snowshoe conditions! It was cold too, perfectly still and the sky cloudless. Me and Isaac had turned up early to set up for a bushcraft course for a family from Edinburgh, mum - …
Weaving a Grass Mat
A fun bushcraft project to try in the winter is to make a grass mat using a weaving loom made from hazel. Here’s how you do it... The first step is to make the loom. Look for a hazel tree and collect several long straight branches of dead standing wood about a thumb thickness in …
