Woodcraft School News

Congratulations to John Rhyder who is now the proud owner of a post graduate certificate in Species Identification and Recording. This course was run through the Field Studies Council and the University of Birmingham. John specialised in mammals, bats, reptiles and amphibians, fungi and woodland plants.

John is now writing a regular monthly column in the local Chichester Observer covering all aspects of bushcraft and wildlife. Currently into its 3rd month, it seems it has been well received inspiring lots of general enquiries about nature.

We are hosting a number of events in 2012 connected with the CyberTracker system and later this year we welcome Mark Elbroch and Brian McConnell to our southern camp. Both men are well known and respected experts from the USA having authored books on the subject. We are holding 2 evaluations and one workshop and more details can be found here. To aid us Lord Cowdray has given us permission to wander lightly over his 16,500 acre estate which has many different terrains and habitats.

We are also re-launching our popular two day Tracking Workshop to cover track and sign identification and trailing - more details to be found here.

We are pleased to bring back this popular tour for 2013, resurrected because we miss the country and need an excuse to go back (!) and to introduce more people to the delights we have found deep in the woods! The accommodation is comfortable and the tour is great fun, very informative and you will see all manner of animals and their sign on route. At £695 it is a bit of a steal too! - View Tour Details

Following the success of our Woodland Heritage and our Hedgelaying courses we now have new dates available. You can also read reviews of these courses on the relevant pages.

We are pleased to welcome Andrew Senior to our team for the 2012 Instructor course. Andy completed this programme back in 2010 and has since spent a year in Columbia and on his return has started back into bushcraft and traditional history teaching. Watch out for his war bow when we have the archery competition....

Winner of the 2011 Archery Competition at the Halloween event was Adam Sumner who beat everyone very credibly. Special mention goes to our young son Finn who came 3rd! We all had a great weekend and had a large number of expertly carved pumpkins for the competition and of course Caron's pumpkin pie (thanks to Abel and Cole for their recipe!). Many thanks to all of the instructors who attended and who delivered some excellent sessions throughout the two days.

We are working on several exciting new developments which have led to us reducing the number of courses we offer. Although we are still offering the same variety it just means now that there are fewer of them! Increasingly more and more of our time is demanded by private bookings from organisations and individuals and through ventures with partners.

We would like to congratulate Phil Brown who won the National Bow Drill competition for 2011 with a time of 1 minute and 2 secondsfrom drilling to flame! As a past instructor with Woodcraft School we would like to take some of the credit as we know he has been trained well!!!