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“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” says Andy. “If you genuinely needed to survive you’d eat anything." He holds the plate up to my face. “It’s not like they’re alive,” he says. I take a deep gulp, close my eyes and lift one of the creatures towards my mouth.
Twenty hours earlier I'd met Andy along with eight other raw recruits in the car park of the Gower Heritage Centre, ready for my first attempt at bushcraft. I'm certainly no Ray Mears, but how hard could constructing a shelter and lighting a fire without matches be? I was soon to find out.

We bundled into a couple of 4x4s and drove for 10-minutes or so through a stream and around some muddy, winding roads. Then we continued on foot through thick, wet woodland. It was there, in a small clearing, that we met Jim. A quiet, likeable man with a dark beard and thick Swansea accent, Jim assists Andy in running Dryad Bushcraft’s overnight practical woodsman courses. Andy, as the founder and head instructor of Dryad, is the more vocal of the double act. He left a career at the BBC to run these courses and now feels more at home. “I’ve just always gotten a buzz from the outdoors,” he said. “Doing practical things, trying to solve problems with team-work, using your head and hands.”

We were promptly introduced to our knives and shown how to make the kind of items that might be valuable in a survival situation: pegs, food skewers, and “feather sticks”, the product of subtly half-shaving layers off a stick to make it burn easier. Jim, meanwhile, was building an ingenious contraption to hover over a cooking pot. He whittled a hook into the end of one of the struts, enabling one stick to hang from the other. “It’s shaped a bit like a parrot’s beak,” he said before pausing and making eye contact with me. “That’s another bird that looks nicer than it is.” He looked away without explaining further.

It was getting cold and the wind was building. “Probably a good time to go on to fire lighting,” Andy called. In my pocket was a lighter. “That’s cheating,” said Andy, handing me a hazel branch bow, a shaved stick and another piece of wood. “Use those.” Roughly 10 minutes of friction later, smoke appeared. I started bouncing around with excitement, arms waving in the air. The other eight members of the “expedition” huddled round, sharing my sense of pride. For the next minute or two no one discussed anything except fire made with sticks. Or, bow drill friction technique, as the experts call it. Then, abruptly, the joy disappeared.

“ It’s gone out,” noticed Mario, one of my fellow bushcraft novices. The ember, after a promising start, failed to ignite the surrounding pile of dried bracken and leaves. There was a collective groan. “You need to blow on it,” said Gary, one of the more able of our crew. He took the bow from my hands and delivered an impromptu lesson. Jim stopped him. “You can tell a man about his politics and you can tell him about money, but if you mess with a man’s fire, he’ll pounce on you with both fists.” (To be honest, I wouldn't have got that mad, really.) Everyone got back to work on their own fires. And, surprisingly I managed a glowing ember, then a rapidly expanding fire. The excitement at something as simple as a spark was hard to explain, but Andy has seen it hundreds of times before. “I think most men at their core are fascinated by this stuff,” he said.
By now the sun was well into its descent and the winter breeze was building. My only protection against the weather would come from whatever I could create using a pocket saw and knife. “Looks like it’s going to be a chilly one,” Andy said. I used the saw for nearly an hour until I had a pile of 50-odd branches. I stacked them into a lop-sided pyramid as the lads had demonstrated earlier, and began the process of chucking leaves, foliage and other dirt onto the side of the structure, fleshing out the bones, as it were. Rather aptly it’s known as a debris shelter. A mattress of leaves on the floor, I was told, would help prevent my body’s heat escaping into the ground.

Two hours later, it was finished, a muddy palace. I got in. It was too small, sloping in such a way that most of my head would be exposed. I lay there, watching a couple of bugs play where I would be in a few hours. I started thinking about a comfortable sofa and a takeaway. Maybe I wasn't cut out for this kind of thing after all? I snapped out of my daydream when the day’s first raindrop breached my shelter.
Andy and Jim cooked us a surprisingly good supper over the fire – hot, fragrant cawl. And after the day's exertions I figured I could sleep just about anywhere. But it wasn't to be. I woke just after 4am when some of my shelter’s support struts collapsed and mud fell in my right ear – and that was about it. When morning arrived, the guys congregated around the fire where the night before we had eaten and exchanged stories. “How was your night?” was repeated over and again. Everyone had something to say, either to explain how cosy their den had been, or to joke about the mishaps. One or two people were particularly proud of their efforts.

“ A lot of people emerge as natural leaders in these situations,” Andy noted. “There’s nothing like survival challenges for getting blokes all competitive.” “It brings the real person out,” Jim added. And it’s fun to boot. It’s probably why their courses are so popular with companies on team building days and guys on stag weekends. “The ability to adapt to different circumstances, and to utilise unorthodox methods to achieve objectives, is considered by many companies to be particularly important in the current economic climate,” Andy explained.

We rounded off the trip with a foraging mission and some snaring techniques. We found berries for eating and plants for medicine. I can’t remember which did what out of the handful of nettles, burdock root, Wall Pennywort and ground ivy, but it was genuinely amazing to see what you can find growing out of mud.
And then Jim brought out the mealworms.

“ Good food,” said Jim. He had a tub of them, imported from some far-flung land for the purpose of eating. The others gathered round, ready to round off their trip with some genuine bush-tucker. Jim piled the wiggling worms onto the fire and prepared the “meal”. Each worm was about two inches long, cased in what looked like a segmented shell, a dull yellow in colour. The plate was handed around, the natural leaders leaping forward to prove themselves. I shuffled to the back. "It’s not like they’re alive or anything,” Andy said. I made three aborted attempts at even touching one before finally gripping a crispy carcass. I closed my eyes, shoved it in my mouth, chewed it twice and swallowed.

It really didn't taste that bad. Something like slightly wet popcorn. I felt an odd sense of achievement. Here was something I could tell the boys in the pub and none of them would be able to match it. When the time came to pack up and go home surprisingly fond goodbyes were exchanged. “That’s a superb way to spend a weekend,” Gary said. “You learn a lot about yourself,” added Mario.
You learn a lot more, too. And a bit about parrots.

For more information about Dryad Bushcraft visit www.dryadbushcraft.co.uk email info@dryadbushcraft.co.uk, or call 01792 547213

Beating about the Bush