Monthly Archives: May 2017


Elder flower cordial

Elder (Sambucus nigra) is a small, common tree that produces a fabulous white flower that can be used to make wonderful elder flower cordial.  I’ve written a recipe previously, but here is another that we’ve tried recently; it takes slightly less time to make the cordial and so is worth a go if you just can’t […]

elder flower cordial recipe | Kent | London | south east | Essex

natural cordage | Kent | London | Essex | south east

Making simple 2-ply natural cordage 1

I’ve written previously about preparing nettles and sweet chestnut inner bark for making natural cordage but haven’t shown how to turn the prepared fibres into cordage.  So now seems the time to rectify that.  In the photos below Bob is using nettle fibres, but the process is the same whatever fibres you might have to […]


knife strokes | knife cuts | knife skills | south east | Kent | London

Knife strokes

Hopefully you’ve already taken a look at this post on knife safety, so now to look at different knife strokes, or cuts.  It’s important to know what knife stroke to use and when so that you can work safely, efficiently and effectively. First up are a couple of power strokes; these are strokes that I […]


Fermented ramsons

Ramsons (Allium ursinum) are one of my absolute favourite spring time wild plants to eat as not only are they delicious but also incredibly versatile.  Recently Nicola made some fermented ramsons.  The fermentation helps to preserve the ramsons as well as developing a somewhat unique flavour! Ingredients 1 kg of ramson leaves, stems and buds […]

fermented ramsons

lighters | Fire lighting | bushcraft | Kent | south east | London

Lighters   Recently updated !

This post was originally an article that I wrote for The Bushcraft Journal as part of a series on fire lighting  It appeared in Issue 8.  If you don’t get it already, it’s a fantastic magazine and well worth the price. Lighters Continuing on from matches in the last issue, this time around I’m going to look at lighters.  […]