Learn essential survival skills including shelter building, fire lighting, navigation, first aid, outdoor safety and practical skills to survive in the wilderness.
A fire-lighting kit doesn’t need to be complicated and it doesn’t need to have too much equipment. In fact, one of the best kits is small enough to keep in a pocket or a corner of your rucksack and contains a few different ways of getting a fire started rather than relying on one single…
Lighting a fire in the rain is less about having a special firelighting trick and more about preparation. If you simply collect a pile of wet wood, strike a match and hope for the best, you’re likely to end up cold, frustrated and surrounded by smoke. The secret is to find the driest material you…
Affiliate disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you purchase something through one of our links, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. A firesteel is one of the most useful fire-lighting tools to learn because it can produce a hot shower of sparks even when matches and lighters aren’t practical….
Snow can look like one of the least useful materials for building a shelter, but when it is deep enough and properly packed, it can provide surprisingly good insulation. A well-built snow shelter can block wind and trap warmth far more effectively than you might expect for something so cold. There are several types of…
Staying dry outdoors is not simply a matter of putting on a waterproof jacket. Rain is an obvious source of moisture, but sweat can leave you just as wet, particularly when you’re walking uphill, carrying a heavy rucksack or working hard around camp. The trick is to manage both at the same time. You want…
A bivvy bag and an emergency blanket are both useful pieces of outdoor equipment, but they have different important jobs. A bivvy bag is designed to go around you and your sleeping system, while an emergency blanket is much more flexible and can be used to reflect heat, provide some protection from wind and rain,…
A debris shelter is a simple woodland shelter made mainly from natural materials such as branches, leaves, moss and other fallen vegetation. It is one of the more interesting shelter-building skills to practise because the materials are all around you, but making a shelter that actually keeps you warm and reasonably dry takes more than…
A tarp A-frame shelter is a classic and one of the simplest shelters you can build outdoors. It is a useful skill to learn because the same basic design works with very little equipment. With a tarp, some cordage and a few suitable pegs, you can create a shelter that gives you protection from rain…
Putting up a tent is usually straightforward when the weather is calm, but strong wind can turn a simple job into a terrible battle. Poles blow around, fabric catches the wind like a sail and anything you put down seems to disappear across the campsite just when you need it. The key is to work…
What if learning outdoor skills wasn’t just about reading an article and moving on? What if you could actually build your skills, track your progress, take on challenges and see how far you’ve come? That’s what we’re building here at Survival Guides UK. We’ve been adding new tools and features to turn the site into…
