Learn essential survival skills including shelter building, fire lighting, navigation, first aid, outdoor safety and practical skills to survive in the wilderness.
Your first few hikes don’t need to be complicated. You certainly don’t need the most expensive equipment, an enormous rucksack or years of outdoor experience. What matters most is choosing a suitable walk, knowing what you’re getting yourself into and being prepared for conditions to change. Hiking gets easier as you gain experience, but there…
Being able to orientate a map is one of those navigation skills that makes everything else much easier. Instead of trying to mentally turn the landscape around to match the map, you turn the map so that it represents the ground in front of you. Once a map is orientated, features on the paper should…
If you find yourself outdoors without a compass, there are still ways to work out roughly which direction is north. The Sun, shadows and stars can all give you useful clues, although none of these methods should be treated as a precise replacement for a compass. The most important thing is to understand what each…
Learning how to take a back bearing is a simple navigation skill that can give you a useful check on where you have come from. It is particularly helpful when you’re navigating across open ground, checking a route or trying to confirm that a feature you’ve identified is actually where you think it is. Once…
You don’t always see the animals that live around you. In fact, most wildlife is much better at avoiding people than people are at spotting it. What you can often find, though, are the little signs they leave behind. A footprint in soft mud, freshly nibbled vegetation or a narrow trail through long grass can…
Steep ground can make an ordinary walk feel much harder than it needs to be. The temptation is often to push harder and try to get the difficult section over with, but that usually leaves you tired surprisingly quickly. Walking efficiently on steep ground is more about how you move than how strong you are….
You don’t always have a compass in your hand when you’re outdoors. Your equipment might have been left behind, you may be teaching someone the basics of navigation, or you might simply want to improve your ability to understand the landscape around you. There are several ways to work out roughly which direction you are…
There is a big difference between knowing how an outdoor skill works and being able to use it when you actually need it. That’s why challenges can be such a good way to learn new skills. Instead of simply reading another guide, give yourself something to achieve and see how you get on. It is…
A map is one of those pieces of outdoor equipment that is easy to take for granted until it gets soaked and starts to fall apart in your hands. Once the paper becomes wet, it can become difficult to fold, markings can smudge and the map may start to tear surprisingly easily. Keeping it protected…
Outdoor skills can seem like a huge subject when you first start learning. There are maps and compasses, fires, shelters, knots, navigation, cooking, first aid, weather, water and plenty more besides. You don’t need to learn everything at once. In fact, trying to do so can make it harder to remember what you’ve learned. A…
