Our Forager’s Journey programme is an immersive eight-part wild food adventure through seasons and habitats, based in beautiful locations around Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. The programme, now in its fourth year, is for those wishing to delve deeper into the fascinating worlds of wild food and medicines, fire and bushcraft skills, natural crafts, and plant lore.
*PRIORITY BOOKING LIST FULL*
Email us to be added to Waiting List. We will notify you if spaces are available after priority booking.
Programme dates for 2025:
- Sunday 16th March
- Saturday 12th April
- Sunday 18th May
- Sunday 22nd June
- Saturday 19th & Sunday 20th July – OVERNIGHT CAMPOUT
- Sunday 7th September
- Sunday 5th October
- Sunday 2nd November
Timings for each day 10.30am – roughly 5pm
Spring & Summer Foraging Courses
Registration and Booking:
Bookings will open in October 2024, beginning with those on the Priority Booking List (now full). If you would like to be added to the waitlist to be contacted should any spaces become available after priority booking, please email us here.
The total cost for the 2025 programme is £890.
This can be made in instalments as follows: a £200 deposit followed by five monthly payments of £138.
March
No Events
April
An introduction to the practice of foraging and its core principlesMay
June
No Events
July
No Events
August
No Events
The programme includes:
- EIGHT GATHERINGS: A guided journey through the forager’s year across eight sessions, learning how to safely identify, harvest and prepare a wide range of wild plants and fungi throughout the seasons.
- OVERNIGHT CAMPOUT: New for 2025, the group will head off into beautiful woodland for an overnight campout during the summer, for which you will set up camp using skills learned on the course, forage for wild food, cook an evening meal over the campfire, and spend the night in woodland with your fellow foragers.
- EXPLORING VARIED HABITATS: Understanding of what can be found in different habitats, including woodland, meadow and hedgerow. Your tutors will take you to some of their favourite secret locations in the Calder Valley, passing through stunning scenery on foot.
- PROCESSING AND PREPARING WILD FOODS: Sessions include practical, hands-on processing of plants, nuts, seeds, berries and fungi to make foods, drinks and medicines.
- FIRE-CRAFT SKILLS: You will learn how to use foraged materials to create fire from a spark, ancestral fire lighting techniques, gathering natural tinder and fuel, making a reliable fire whatever the weather, and campfire cooking.
- NATURAL CRAFTING: Learn a range of natural crafting skills including how to make containers from foraged bark, cordage from foraged fibres, and how to whittle wood using hand tools to make useful and decorative objects.
- HERBALISM: Session include the use of plants, herbs, and mushrooms as medicines and items for a ‘wild first aid kit’, following in the footsteps of our ancestors and drawing on contemporary research.
- STORIES AND PLANTLORE: Your guides will share stories, folklore, song and history to nurture deeper connections to the land and its wild inhabitants.
- PRE-PREPARED TASTERS & TREATS: You will be offered a range of wild food tasters to try each session, from traditional preparations like ferments and vinegars to some of our more modern creations such as wild ketchup and chocolate truffles.
- REFLECTIVE TIME IN NATURE: We will encourage you to form deep connections with the land, plants and fungi through mindful time in nature, focused observation, drawing, and engaging all of your senses to get to know the plants and fungi we find.
- THREE COURSE FEAST: We will prepare a three-course wild feast as a group to celebrate the end of the programme in November.
- REKINDLING COMMUNITY TRADITIONS: The celebration of community is central to the course. Our ancestors worked together to gather and prepare food, make fire, and honour seasonal transitions with ritual and celebration. We seek to rekindle this way of being throughout the journey.
- WILD WORK ASSIGNMENTS: These suggested activities will encourage you to stay on the Forager’s Journey when you are back at home between sessions.
- FORAGER’S JOURNEY KIT: You will receive a kit containing useful items for the journey including a journal/ sketch pad, hand lens, stationary and other surprises.
2025 Foraging Course Gift Vouchers
Our Foraging Course Gift Vouchers are a popular choice for Christmas and Birthday gifts. Once you’ve purchased a voucher, you can either print a copy or have it emailed to your recipient. They can then book themselves onto any Foraging Course of the same value in 2025. Courses take place regularly throughout the year with plenty of options to choose from. Click on the voucher image to make your purchase.
Foraging Tutors
Live Wild’s Leonie Morris –Leonie is co-founder and director of Live Wild and works with people of all ages to help them rediscover the ‘wild nature’ both inside and outside of us. She is a qualified Bushcraft Instructor & Wild Food Teacher, with many years of experience teaching a range of programmes including regular seasonal foraging courses, which come recommended by the Guardian newspaper. Along with our unique long-term foraging programme, The Forager’s Journey, she also facilitates the Questing With Fire rite-of-passage programme as well as various nature-connection offerings for children. Leonie is happiest when sharing foraging wisdom in a holistic context: using all of the senses to gather wild food respectfully and playfully in homemade baskets; foraging for the materials to build a fire; lighting the fire together using ancestral techniques; and cooking up finds as a community. She is a strong believer that all food tastes best cooked over a fire and enjoyed with others! Leonie is a member of the Association of Forager’s and is part of The Wild Biome Project, for which she will eat 100% wild food for a month in 2025.
Live Wild’s Sophie Wren – Sophie is an experienced foraging and fungi teacher and has been co-leading Live Wild’s seasonal foraging courses, which come recommended by the Guardian newspaper, since 2018. Her own foraging journey began during her years living on the inland waterways where, mooring up in different locations on her boat, she became fascinated by the plants, trees and fungi that surrounded her. Foraging fit very well with an off-grid and self-sufficient lifestyle, and soon she was hooked! The unexpected gift was a depth of connection to the wild world that has been life-changing. It wasn’t long before fungi became a fascination, and Sophie studied mycology with the Field Studies Council as well as soaking up wisdom from various mentors and elders in the foraging community. Sophie is co-creator and facilitator of Live Wild’s unique long-term foraging programme, The Forager’s Journey, and is a proud member of the Association of Foragers. She also teaches fungi and foraging courses at various venues across the North East and loves to share folklore, stories and songs. You can listen to her talk about foraging on BBC Sounds.
Access:
Please note that the course involves some adventurous walks around the valley, sometimes walking for four hours or so during a day, albeit at a steady pace. The ground will be steep and uneven in places. Please contact us if you are concerned that access may be an issue: info@livewild.org.uk
Travel:
Our meeting points will be close to public transport links, accessible from Hebden Bridge centre.
Cancellation policy:
Please ensure you can fully commit to this course and all of the sessions before booking. The deposit is nonrefundable under any circumstances. If a booking is cancelled more than three months before the start of the programme then all monies paid after the deposit will be refunded.
If the booking is cancelled within three months of the course date: monies paid after the deposit will only be refunded if Live Wild are able to fill the place on the programme. Should we be unable to fill the place, we cannot offer a refund.
Terms & Conditions
By booking onto a Live Wild Foraging Course or Foraging Course With Wild Feast you accept the Terms and Conditions outlined here
Please note:
- Courses are suitable for people aged 14+. Under 18s must be accompanied by an adult.
- Due to the sensitive nature of the site and the presence of food and fire, dogs are not permitted on courses