Outdoor adventure company Camp Wilderness is delighted to be springing head-first into a brighter season, with brand-new camping experiences in beautiful locations such as Penshurst Place in Kent, Blenheim Woods in Oxfordshire and Cuffley Camp in Hertfordshire, all curated by world-renowned survival expert Ed Stafford.
We caught up with Ed, to hear all about the new Camp Wilderness project, to chat about some of Ed’s expeditions and tips for anyone wanting to adventure outdoors.
Camp Wildernes: inspiring the next generation to get outdoors
Camp wilderness is essentially a sister product to The Bushcraft Company and the aim for the project was to get a ‘back to basic’ approach to the outdoors, get kids excited about going into the outdoors, inspire a generation to be outside and do the things we did as kids, such as light fires, build dens, and just explore their natural surroundings and have fun in that setting.
So The Bushcraft Company started about 10 years ago, and grew to this massive company which is based around school residentials, Camp Wilderness takes the school residential part away, and opens up to any child from 6 to 16 that wants to come along and experience that outdoor environment, with friends or just come along by themselves and make new friends. So it’s a great opportunity for them to come experience the outdoors, meet new people, work on not only the harder bush craft skills such as making dens, lighting fires, meet new people and make new friends.
Ed, what inspired you to get involved with camp wilderness?
It just resonates so much with everything that I want to do at the moment, I owe massive amounts to being outdoors basically, from being in the Scouts, being in the military, to eventually having the career that I’ve got. But it’s not just that it’s got me where it has from a careers perspective, it’s also taught me so much about life, and I really do think that being outdoors is an amazing crucible for self development. Camp Wilderness is a great set up where you can throw children and adults actually into this environment, where they don’t have all the answers, they don’t have all the solutions, and they’re humbled. They have to come up with new ideas and new ways of doing things, and therefore are inherently growing and developing as human beings. Camp Wilderness is a very well established company, and The Bushcraft Company, and I just thought it would be an amazing thing to be a part of.
Together with Chris from the camp, we have redesigned and evolved what was already there to make more advanced camps, recognising that not everyone is coming in at the same level. There might be some people where just to sleep outdoors in a tent is massively overwhelming, hearing the sound of the outdoors at night. There will be other kids who really want to master the bow drill or nail fire by friction and things like that. So by evolving the camps, we have more options.
You can still do their normal 3 day camp or you can do an advanced camp. We’ve also been evolving it even further for families aswel, because obviously we’ve all been in lockdown and even though you might think you’ve spent too long with your family, most people have just been ‘existing’ together, so throwing them into a scenario where they have to rely on and trust each other, they have to work together as a team, suddenly it starts to recement those family ties aswel.
The camp sounds amazing, I think after lockdown it’s good to spend time as a family, with a fresh dynamic and spend time out of their comfort zones.
Well exactly, my niece who’s 17 years old lives with us and I realised a couple of days ago that I hadn’t spoken to her in 48 hours and we occupy the same house. It’s things like that, passing ships in the night and just ‘existing’ together. We have all gone through really tough times let’s face it, we’re used to far more social freedoms, and coming back to the house with far more interesting stories, and certainly with lockdown that wasn’t happening, you don’t come back with exciting stories and we’re all just existing, and so I think it’s a nice antidote to that.
What inspired you to become an explorer and where did your love of the outdoors come from?
I grew up in a different era, where it was safe to roam the fields, build dens and we used to play this game in our village called manhunt – that sort of freedom, I think my affinity for nature probably started there. I joined the cubs and scouts and just embraced it. I think for me, it was, you’ve got this love of being in the outdoors, but suddenly you add this skillset, being able to navigate using a compass and pack a rucksack and organise myself with that rucksack for the next week and suddenly that gives you the ability to become more confident outdoors.
I think it all came from a sort of ability and nowadays, sadly, it’s not as easy to just gain immediate access to the outdoors and to not have to worry at all. So I think again that’s why Camp Wilderness comes into its own because you’re providing a safe environment in which to have that adventure, learn the same life lessons and have the same fun basically.
It can be quite daunting for people when they start going on adventures, do you think it’s important to start at a young age?
There is always inherent risk, that’s why Camp Wilderness is so great, it teaches skills like using a knife, setting up a camp etc, with qualified instructors on hand, all of the safety procedures and risk assessments in place – so I think it’s a nice way to expose kids to those inherent dangers of the outdoors without the risk.
Even in terms of navigation a lot of people rely on a phone, not many people are able to use a map and compass in an emergency scenario. In the Amazon, obviously I can use a map and compass, but I was using a GPS for most of the navigation, or the sun actually. There was a time when I turned the GPS on and all the satellites weren’t working as my GPS was broken, so we had to navigate using a one to four million map of South America. The map had nine countries on it, and one millimetres was 4 kilometres and taking bearings on that was just ridiculous, its an extreme example, but those basic skills mean that you’re not as reliant on your phone if it breaks and just having a broader understanding of ways of looking after yourself from a young age makes for a more rounded human being.
What did you learn about yourself while walking the Amazon?
There was quite a lot of things to be honest, I’ve been quite open about the fact that I was an immature adult when I started it and it was not just the beginning of a journey of exploration, but also a journey of understanding myself and becoming a better version of myself really. I didn’t treat my original walking partner Luke very well because I projected a lot of my stresses onto him, which I’m not proud of. I think these adventures are great for understanding yourself, forgiving yourself, self awareness, you go through them and you end up learning so many lessons along the way.
A big lesson for that would be, I was fixated on the end and I wanted to get to the end beyond anything, as a result I was constantly thinking about it and kind of wished the whole expedition away, in a rush to finish and the adventure almost became an ‘obstacle’ in the way of getting to the end. People I met, rather than being massively interested in them, it was just like ‘right you are just in the way of me getting to the end.’
I think weirdly we all do that in life, we look forward to the next holiday or getting to the weekend and we aren’t as present. I read a book called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle when I got back and I really wish I’d read this before my Amazon expedition, I’ve probably read it about 20 times now and I even bought a Spanish version and sent it to Cho who was my walking partner and said ‘mate this is amazing’ and he wrote back and said ‘yeah I know this Ed, I’ve already read it.’ And in fact looking back he was amazingly present and he said yeah it would have been good if you’d read that before the expedition too.
We all spend so much time in our heads, projecting into the future, worrying about what’s going to happen next and hanging on to things you ‘shouldn’t have done’ or ‘should have done’ in the past, and it’s all just noise in your head – it does stop you having proper relationships with people in the present or enjoying situations really. So that was one of the biggest lessons from the Amazon, the importance of being more present.
Are you still in contact with ‘Cho’ since walking the amazon?
Yeah at the moment he’s walking the Amazon with some guy who’s walking it backwards, he’s going for four and a half years and Cho is at the moment guiding him through the jungle between Atelier and where he lives. So yeah he’s back walking the Amazon, backwards! Cho is great, I don’t think I would have been able to complete the whole thing had it not been for him. Initially he agreed to work for 5 days as a guide and ended up joining me for two years of his life and never even went home, so I owe a huge amount to him.
At the time I had massive highs and lows, and he was so level headed and solid, and I needed a character like that to sort of counter act my emotions. In terms of talking to locals, he’s always got time for people, he’d be the interim between me and the local guys, he would get them all laughing and joking, those social skills were hugely important.
Would you say being in isolated and dangerous environments during your expeditions has humbled you?
Very much so. Like other ex army officers, I probably fell into the trap of being a bit arrogant when I started and had this idea that I was going to lead the expedition in the way that was ‘most efficient’ and ‘the fastest’. But then obviously your in South America and things are going to work on a different time frame than you’re used to, but also you know this wasn’t my playground and up to that point I’d only ever done shorter jungle expeditions. The people with the expertise were the local guides, they knew a lot more than me, so yes it was humbling.
Even just basic stuff, for example I couldn’t walk along a log bridge that they could all walk across confidently, you’d cross a river where a tree had fallen across a stream and the local guides would just walk across it without a second thought, and then I’d walk across, get half way and slip on on the log and bounce off into the river and they’d all laugh at me. You have to be humbled at that stuff when you’re just a walking disaster initially, but then slowly you’d get better, but yeah, definitely humbling.
What advice would you give to anyone wanting to start exploring outdoors for the first time?
Chris, Camp Wilderness; I think for me, advice I would give to anyone looking to get into the outdoors would be to start small, it’s such a big industry and people can get caught up in kit and equipment and whatever else they need to buy, these physical things they need like a GPS and things like that. But when you think about it, this is what we all did as kids, it is just the basic explorations, so if you are going to go out for the first time in the mountains, don’t chose the tallest most technical one, start with a local hill or woodland that you know reasonably well, take a new path, take somewhere different. Start small and gradually work your way up.
For me personally I’ve learnt a lot through books on survival guides, and then just trial and error in my back garden. Like the bow drill, I spent 2 weeks trying to learn the bow drill and the first time I got that ember I was so excited that I actually snapped my bow in half. So yeah start small and have patience, and be ready for a great learning experience because there is always more to learn.
Ed, I agree with this completely, there is a modern wave of adventurer that are throwing themselves into the massive challenges very early on in their career, and not to jump the gun too quickly because you can easily end up in a situation where you just don’t have the experience to deal with it and although I can be quite flippant the way I talk about the Amazon, that was at the point where I’d done four years in the military and all the scouts stuff and then all the expeditions, so I do wholeheartedly agree with Chris, it’s an amazing path to go down having all these adventures, but you need to put in the time to learn the skills to keep yourself safe.
What is your favourite national park/mountain in the UK?
Chris: Snowdonia, I spent a Winter living up there and spent the time doing as many mountains and as I physically could, and any time I’m away from bush craft I’m usually in Snowdonia I love it up there.
Ed: For me it’s the Peak District, it’s where I learnt to navigate and spent a lot of time with the scouts there, it’s got an affinity to me and great pubs and stuff around it which is always nice.
What’s the first meal you look forward to after a long expedition?
Fish, chips and mushy peas! And a pint of Guinness.
How did it feel to beat your old bushcraft teacher Will Lord in the first man out?
He’s an amazing guy, has a massive heart and I love him to bits, but it didn’t feel as satisfying as some of the others because at the end of the day he’s a 56 year old smoker, so it was a bit unfair anyway you know, he’s not renowned for long distance running and I only ended up beating him as I was a bit younger and fitter than him, but in terms of actual primitive skills, knowledge and experience, I couldn’t even mention myself in the same sentence.
Do you find having children now makes you more calculated with regards to new adventures?
I think you have to deliberately counter it, I remember when my wife Laura was pregnant with Ran, she decided to cycle across Ireland when she was 8 months pregnant and everything in me wanted to say don’t do this, it’s too much of a risk but obviously she was fine. After he was born, I felt like suddenly I’ve got someone in my life that was so important that I didn’t want to take the same risks as before, you almost have to counter that as a parent.
If I was a lazier parent I might say it’s so much safer in front of the TV, and I’m safer doing a more menial job, but I owe a lot of my life to expeditions and adventures. With kids you have to up your game, you have to think right okay if we’re going to take him along with us, into an environment where we want him to experience these things, but we want to keep it safe then we’ve got to be more ‘on it’, more professional and as a parent that’s definitely the optimum, you’re upping your game.
We did take Ran when he was 8 months old into Guyana, we landed in George Town, hired a twin plane and landed on a grass runway in the jungle, then hired people to help take him up river to meet his mum who was kayaking down the river, he could sit but couldn’t stand up at this point, and it’s such an amazing thing that he was there with us. We obviously had helicopters on call etc and really did make sure that he was safe, we’re both very competent people so he was never at risk.
I think it’s important to get children outdoors at a young age and exposing children to certain risks when they’re a little older is important as a parent, it’s all too easy to give them an tablet/iPad and sit them in front of the TV, it seems like you’re protecting them but actually you’re not allowing them to grow to their full potential.
Camp Wilderness weekends & how to book:
There are two weekends to choose from, depending on whether families want a two or three-day experience.
The two-day weekends are a chance to reset the family dynamic out in nature, with the chance to spend much-needed down time together, away from screens and doing wholesome outdoor activities with each-other.
The three-day weekends, especially created by Ed, include everything that the two-day weekend offers, but is designed to test the mind and body with much more challenging bushcraft and survival experiences.
Prices for the weekends start from £380.00 per family and places are limited. For more information about Camp Wilderness Families please visit to www.campwilderness.co.uk. Bookings can be made directly through the website.
