New Woodlore Assistant David Southey

On 9th – 11th March Dan Hume and Keith Whitehead ran an induction weekend for the new members of staff who joined the team recently as a result of our recruitment process in November.  New members of the team were shown the ropes of setting up camp, useful routes to our course sites, shops and hospitals, amongst being introduced to other essential knowledge required for assisting on our courses to ensure they run seamlessly for our clients.

We would like to take this opportunity to welcome David Southey, Joel Toren, Mark Callard and Nigel Hopkins to the team and we hope they will enjoy their time with us.

Following the induction weekend the newer members of the team were joined by the rest of the outdoor team for Woodlore’s annual training week.  Everyone was pleased to be back in the woods again, and although a training exercise, training week is a fantastic chance for everyone to get together to compare their winter adventure stories and to discuss the year ahead.

During the week Head of Operations Dan Hume hosted many activities for the group including a tracking evaluation, carving, training for trainers delivered by Brian Fox and PT.

High on the agenda was Woodlore’s annual First Aid Training.  Expertly run as always by Fusion Medical Limited, it provided the Woodlore team with a high level of competence in this essential field of Bushcraft.  First aid is often an underrated skill, but one which anybody who is keen to enjoy the outdoors should have.

Dressing a wound during a first aid scenario

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The following post was kindly written by Woodlore Aspirant Instructor Sarah Day:

The recent fall of snow offered great opportunities to see tracks and signs left by wildlife. It was a real eye-opener, and made me realise how much I must miss normally.

Animal tracks in the snow

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The following post was written by Woodlore Aspirant Instructor Sarah Day:

A Canoe Trip in the Snow – Approx. 27 km – River Stour, Suffolk

“When there’s ice on the river, a wise man sleeps with his canoe boots.”

(Mine froze solid during the night – most unpleasant, though a dip in the water made them flexible enough to put on, they were still very, very cold.)

A night-time walk in the snow along my nearest river was enough to convince me that I needed to get the canoe out and paddle my favourite river; the Stour in Suffolk. Having just outfitted my canoe with airbags and skid plates, it seemed like a perfect excuse to get back out on the water.

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The following post was kindly written by Woodlore Aspirant Instructor Sarah Day:

Though spring can seem a long way off during the final throes of a British winter, it won’t be long before the new course season starts!

For me, this year is especially exciting because I will be working on some courses that I’ve never worked on before. Some of my outdoorsy books have been removed from their shelf and are lying around the house in various stages of read-ness, the backs of my notebooks are full of diagrams of things I want to make, lists of kit I need to mend and things I need to do in preparation for the new season.

However, one aspect of preparation that isn’t always mentioned in conjunction with Bushcraft is fitness. Although the set up of a camp and the day-to-day running of it demand more walking about than an average day in an office job, many of the skills that form part of your outdoor arsenal are aimed at minimising the amount of energy required and working efficiently; but that doesn’t mean being unfit is fine – it’s not.

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Over the past month we created a brand new area on our website, to introduce you to our full-time office team. If you’re a regular customer of Woodlore, you’ll hopefully be familiar with us enough to know that we’re a friendly bunch who are always happy to help our customers!

At the core of Woodlore is a loyal and diverse team, dedicated to providing the best possible service to our customers all over the world. Why not take a moment to get to know our team by clicking on the link below:

(…if you can beat the squirrels of course!)

The following post was kindly provided by Woodlore Aspirant Instructor Sarah Day

During a walk around a local wood, I noticed the ground was littered with thousands of ripe chestnuts – while I picked some of those (extricating them from their spikey cases with the toe of my boot) more were falling out of the trees; luckily none hit me – I imagine it would have hurt! It makes me wonder how people would have extracted the nuts thousands of years ago when most folk would presumably have been barefoot or wearing soft moccasins – maybe they just squashed the cases with a log then picked out the nuts?

Ripe chestnuts peeking from their husks

It was interesting trying to notice clues as to which husks held the best nuts. Obviously some of them were bigger, but I found the best way to tell was to look at the back. Where the nuts had grown to a fairly good size there was a cross of un-spikey husk showing – some of these held 2 or 3 good sized nuts. The other clue was to avoid husks that were browner in colour, as these had mostly fallen before the nuts were ripe or had already been raided (and rejected) by squirrels; I concentrated instead on husks that were still light green.

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