We ran our last wild camp craft course of 2018 in the Lake District this weekend in pretty wet soggy conditions, starting with coffee in Coniston and a discussion about each others’ experience, kit, objectives, and wild camping, fire and conservation protocols before heading out to seek a suitable location for a wild camp.

On this event, the participants were eager to camp in woodlands taking the benefit of shelter from the wind. After exploring several types of terrain, we arrived at a suitable location after dark, pitched in the birch woodland, collected water, cooked a meal and explored the mines and quarries in the area.We challenged the participants  to light a fire, using a fire steel, waxed cotton and wood collected from the area and, in mizzly weather they did incredibly well producing a small, perfectly controlled blaze which, had we needed, would have served well for cooking.

The following morning was even wetter (it is the Lake District) and after breakfast we struck camp, cleared the area leaving no trace of our stay and headed back to Coniston for more coffee and farewells.