Discover a World of Fun and Exciting Ancient Skills

Our experience days are custom designed to meet each group's needs in an enjoyable and safe environment.

Bookings

Fire

Being able to make fire is the foundation of a huge range of bushcraft skills.

The ability to create fire was one of humanity's most significant breakthroughs. It allowed our ancestors to spread over most of the world and to survive long Ice Ages.

Fire also allowed us to cook and also to preserve food as well as providing warmth and comfort on dark nights. No wonder some ancient believed that something so powerful and useful must have come from the gods!

How many of us in the modern world could start a fire from scratch in the wild? On a Way Back Skills experience day, you could try out a range of firelighting techniques and tricks.

Skills may include...

  • Firelighting fundamentals & safety.
  • Flint & steel.
  • Char cloth & ferro rod.
  • Bow drill friction fire.
  • Making charcoal, char cloth & punk wood.
  • Fungus firelighting.

Water

Sourcing safe drinking water is an absolute necessity for life.

The ability to source clean drinking water is one of the most fundamental - and urgent - survival skills. You can survive a lot longer without food than you can without water.

Unfortunately, finding drinkable water is harder today than it has ever been, due to the impact of modern farming and industry.

Any aspiring cave-person should know a variety of ways to make water safe to drink, whatever equipment or tools you may have at your disposal, using natural resources including trees, sand, wood, sunshine, and soil.

Skills may include...

  • Harvesting rainwater.
  • Water from plants.
  • Tree transpiration.
  • Solar still.
  • Gravel > Sand > Charcoal filtration.
  • Boiling water (without a pot).
  • Gypsy well.

Food

Nature provides food in abundance... once you know how to find it.

If, for any reason, the stores ran out of supplies, how could you find enough food to eat?

Our early ancestors never had to worry about going hungry for long periods. That's because they understood exactly what was available in their environment at any time of year, how to get it, and how to make the best use of it... skills that we have largely been forgotten today.

Our courses may include foraging walks to discover plants and fungi that may have nutrient or even medical use. In addition, you can discover how to source food from the animal kingdom using a range of traps you can make in the wild.

Skills may include...

  • Foraging.
  • Methods of cooking with fire.
  • Figure-4 deadfall trap.
  • Spring snare.
  • Simple bird trap.
  • Basket fish trap.
  • M-style fish trap.

Heaps more bushcraft skills!

Alongside the essentials of fire, water, and food, our ancestors mastered a huge range of other useful crafts, which we can also enjoy rediscovering. These may include...

  • Making tools and weapons
  • Natural cordage
  • Medicines from nature
  • Shelter building
  • Basket making
  • Tanning skins
  • Making glue
  • Making soap
  • Working with bone
  • Flint knapping

...and many more!!

You will be amazed at the incredible range of things you can make and do with natural materials, sourced directly from the world around you... and at the joy and confidence it brings when you discover how to meet your needs with your own skills!

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