A change of habitat

Growing up on the coast of Essex gave a very focussed habitat type which is why I always craved the change of location during holidays.  Every half-term, end of term, long weekend and the glorious 6 weeks of the summer holiday my parents, three sisters and I would pile into the Morris 1800 family car and hook up the (very small) caravan to head off to a previously unexplored part of the country (at least new to me anyway).  The astute amongst you may realise that this car setup was before seat belts and general safety were at the forefront of people’s minds. My eldest sisters would sit on the back seat while my remaining sister and I would sit on the floor in the back so all of us could play cards or board games using the centre of the bench seat.  This caravanning family holiday approach meant that by the time I was starting high school I’d been to every county in England, several parts of Wales and crossed the border briefly into Scotland but had never travelled abroad.  This never bothered me and to be honest I still don’t really understand why people will travel overseas for holidays without taking the time to see what Britain has to offer.  I will be honest though and declare I’ve now travelled extensively but only after I’d put in my British “dirt time” as we like to refer to any skills based learning approach.

This extensive travel throughout Britain opened my eyes to the vast array of habitats beyond the Essex coast and even when the family holidays took us to other parts of the coastline, I truly appreciated that they weren’t all amusements and piers.  Peaks, mountains, cliffs, rock pools and woodland became my playgrounds and ones I really looked forward to while counting the days down at school.  During this time I fell in love with UP – Essex is not known for its hills – and anything that gave me the exhilaration of seeing for miles after a healthy bit of effort to get there.  When I finally got to a stage in life where working in the outdoor industry was a potential my first thought was Mountain Leader but again still being based in Essex and having a family of my own made training and logging those quality days a mammoth task so it never materialised.  In the meantime my pathway led me to Bushcraft and ultimately my position with Woodland Ways but more importantly a relocation to the Peak District.

To feel grounded and established in this new place a challenge soon came about to walk as many peaks as could be found which led me to the “Ethel’s”.  These 95 peaks are just a list of notable peaks named in honour of Ethel Haythornthwaite who pioneered the creation of the country’s first ever National Park.  The challenge was set about with gusto in January of 2023 and as I write today (February 2024) 68 have been achieved.  This challenge also rekindled the idea of Mountain Leader training but Wales, the Lake District and Scotland still seemed unnecessary to travel to when there was so much to explore on my doorstep.  It was at this point the Hill and Moorland Leader qualification popped onto my radar as a far more attainable alternative that aligned itself with the Ethel Challenge.

With the training completed November 2023 I’ve been on a mission to log my 20 Quality Hill Days in readiness for my assessment in March but what I’ve really enjoyed is still seeing the overlap and transferable skills from Bushcraft.  I love Natural Navigation so aligning this with the compass heavy needs of the qualification was a great boost.  Looking at the flora and fauna from a foraging perspective rather than the identification and habitat worth needed in the qualification also gave added interest to me.  The area that’s taken a while to find though is my desire to make a lot of my own kit. 

Over the years I’ve made various items of clothing, bed rolls and even a Frost River inspired rucksack but they’re designed to be robust and survive near fire and a far cry from the fast and light approaches needed for hill walking.  A very simple project became evident just recently though when I wanted to add some pacing beads (aka ranger beads) to my setup to help me track distances when walking routes or on bearings.  A search just gave loads of plastic options that quite frankly were uninspiring and expensive for the few pennies the components would have cost.  This led me to thinking of a Bushcraft approach, so cobwebs were dusted off brain cells previously dedicated to the more obscure knots I’ve learnt in my time and I set about making some from paracord.  This blog isn’t a how to so I’m not going to begin to explain how these were made but it’s more of a prompt that no matter what projects crop up in day-to-day life take a moment to think of a Bushcraft approach and brush up on a rusty skill.

I’m really looking forward to bringing some exciting new workshops and courses to the extensive list we already offer and combining our navigation courses with Bushcraft skills.  I hope you’ll join me up on a peak soon.