Lesser Spotted Ireland: Patrick Freyne goes on a ‘mancation’

My dad was an army ranger. He’s outdoorsy. He can recall snaring rabbits on manoeuvres and the time a colleague with a broken leg crawled around the mountains for days. Once I couldn’t get in touch with him. “Sorry,” he said. “I was jumping into the sea from a helicopter.”

Another time he took me camping in the Wicklow Mountains. This, he told me later, was a ruse to uncover a rumoured paramilitary training camp, but that’s a long story and I don’t have time to go into it (“Who would suspect a man camping with his son?”).

The point is: the outdoorsy life didn’t stick. I am not tough. I like central heating and electronic devices and being indoors watching documentaries about outdoors. So my editor has sent me to the Living Wilderness Bushcraft School for what is known as “a mancation”.

It’s the Bushcraft Basics weekend (there are more advanced classes) and the list of items to bring includes: a tent, a sleeping mat and waterproof clothes. I don’t have these things so the school provides them.

But I do bring other things on the list: “hand wash” and “a cup”, for example. The handwash is pink with “Hand Maid” written on it. The cup is also pink. Don’t worry, says instructor Johnny Walshe. “By tomorrow night you’ll be buck naked with bramble leaves as a codpiece and a new tribal name.”

Johnny is wearing combats, a cap and a T-shirt and he has several holes in his ears from which earrings formerly hung. He was once a forester and, before that, a “jester”. “I did fire-breathing, that sort of thing.”

In a clearing in the woodland on the Lisnavagh estate in Co Carlow, a blackened kettle is boiling on a campfire and 10 people are gathered on fold-out chairs. There’s Johnny’s partner Claire, tending the fire, his “assistant” Pat and Pat’s girlfriend Lynette. Among the others are Eddie and Robbie, two tattooed middle-aged men from Dublin who frequently go camping in the Dublin Mountains.

“The next time we’ll have the beer dropped off in advance,” says Robbie.

“Carrying the beer nearly killed him the last time,” says Eddie.

There’s also John and Gary, whose respective girlfriends signed them up. “I watch a lot of Bear Grylls,” explains John.

Many people come because of Bear Grylls or Ray Mears, says Johnny, and he has to spend a lot of his time disillusioning them. “They create unrealistic expectations. Bear Grylls does things like backflipping off a cliff while drinking his own piss.” He laughs. “He really likes to drink his own piss.”

He has also met people who became interested in bushcraft after watching the films Into the Wild (about a young man who dies in the wilderness) and 127 Hours (about a man who has to hack his own arm off to free himself from a rockslide).

But for Johnny there’s a big distinction between “survivalism” and “bushcraft”. Survivalism, he says, is only for when things go terribly wrong. While there are plenty of people who want to “run around playing Rambo in the woods” he prefers sitting at a campfire carving a spoon.

“[Bushcraft] is about how to live sustainably in unison with the environment,” he says. “It’s the biggest subject there is.”

Lesson 1: Fire

Nearby there is a large marquee made from an old military parachute. Inside there’s a blackboard on which Johnny has drawn a triangle with the words “heat”, “oxygen” and “fuel” at the corners.

After a brief physics lesson he demonstrates the ways fire can be created – with fire-steels, a magnifying glass and, most impressively, a bow, spindle and hardwood. The latter, he sighs, “is known as ‘fire by frustration’”.

He shows us different kinds of natural tinder and kindling. Silver birch bark, collected from a nearby tree, is an excellent natural tinder. He also shows us how to make pre-prepared firelighters with cotton wool and Vaseline, and the different kinds of camp fire arrangements and how they’re laid out.

Then he gets us all to go out and create our own little fires with fire-steels and tinder bundles and branches. He carefully guides each of us through the process and, at the risk of sounding like an arsonist, I enjoy setting fire to things.

Lesson 2: Tool use

The next morning we gather around the already lit campfire after a relatively comfortable night in tents. There’s a mini-show trial to find the “snorer

”. I’m pretty sure it’s me, but instead they land on lanky John, who doesn’t quite fit the tent.

“It’s meant to be a two-man tent,” sighs John.

“Two midgets,” says Robbie.

After breakfast, we gather around a large selection of knives. "That's not a knife!" someone says every few minutes, like in Crocodile Dundee.

Johnny explains how to safely pass a knife and shows us his own “EDC” (everyday carry). “Axes are outside the remit of this course,” says Johnny. “Because with axes if you cut yourself you lose bits.”

Not that you can’t also be hurt with a knife. “If you cut your femoral artery you’ve 15 to 30 seconds before you die. At that stage it’s ‘thanks for coming’ and we’re dividing your stuff among ourselves.”

We get our own knifes and folding saws and he shows us how to safely and effectively carve wood. We hack away for a while under his supervision.

Lesson 3: Finding food and medicine

“Beware of the nettles, the most dangerous thing in Ireland,” Johnny says, before leading us on a long woodland nature walk.

Nettles aren’t the most dangerous thing in Ireland. Johnny warns of poisonous foxgloves and mushrooms. “You eat the wrong mushroom, you don’t get sick so much as your liver dissolves and dribbles out of your body.”

We stop beneath a beech tree. “Never camp under a beech tree,” he says. The branches fill with sap and are liable to snap off without warning.

But this isn’t really about things that can poison and fall on you. We’re trying to find things we can use.

Bushcraft, he says, is all about preparation, gathering things when they’re in season for a future date when they’re not and you need them.

The elderflower tree’s flowers, for example, are good for respiratory illnesses and hayfever. The hawthorne tree’s edible leaves were once called “bread and cheese”. Plantain is good for cuts and splinters. Goosegrass makes good tinder and also, apparently, a reasonable improvised coffee filter.

“And burdock has medicinal qualities,” says Johnny, “and it tastes . . .” He pauses, passes it to me and waits until I have it in my mouth. “Terrible.”

He has good comic timing. He also wears his learning lightly. On referring to ash by its Latin name Fraxius Excelsior he says: "That makes me feel like Harry Potter."

As we walk, there’s a smell of honeysuckle and the sound of birdsong. We stop to examine animal tracks, and Johnny sometimes props firewood up against trees to be collected later.

We come across a mess of pigeon feathers and have a bit of an animal autopsy. Was the perpetrator a fox? Was it buzzards? Probably both, says Johnny (one after another).

He cautions us to move quietly as we pass a badger set. “I dispute your understanding of moving quietly,” he says.

There’s a wider environmental purpose to it all. Johnny laments how “invasive species” such as laurel can overwhelm woodland. He talks passionately about the importance of preserving biodiversity and our natural indigenous forests.

He takes us into a patch of coniferous woodland to point out how relatively lifeless it is. “What do you see here?” We look around. The ground is bare.

“That’s right. Nothing.”

Back at the camp we eat vegetable stew cooked on the open fire.

Lesson 4: Building stuff

After dinner we begin demonstrating our knife know-how by creating wooden pot-hangers aka “wagon sticks”. We whittle and saw until we’re proudly hanging billycans from rickety tree-branches.

Johnny gives us a lecture on how to create shelter and shows us a “debris shield” he made earlier. He also shows us where he sleeps – a hammock slung between tree trunks. “The best night’s sleep ever,” he says.

Over the weekend Johnny recounts his own adventures. Like the time in South American he crossed paths with a jaguar or the time he traversed the Tundra with little more than a billycan, a knife and a spoon.

I have to leave at this point, heading back to civilisation. It’s been a lot of fun. I enthusiastically picture myself in future whittling wood at editorial meetings and making debris shelters from all the books on the literary desk. I would certainly appreciate a work-hammock.

Before I go someone asks Johnny how long he could survive with no supplies.

“It’s not about living entirely on what’s out there,” he sighs. “It’s about stretching your rations.”

He once got a call from a seasoned hill walker who was tired of carrying a pack. “Could I head out with nothing and survive?” he asked.

Johnny laughed. “Yes,” he said. “But you’ll be very hungry.”

Bushcraft: the basics

You can find out about Johnny Walshe's bushcraft courses at bushcraft.ie. The Bushcraft Basics weekend runs from Friday evening until Sunday evening and includes instruction on "the five core topics of bushcraft": fire, water, shelter, food and craft. You'll need some basic equipment – sleeping bag, walking shoes, tent, but they give you a free knife and saw. It's in a beautiful setting and you will be well fed for the duration.

For inspiration to plan a Lesser Spotted Irish break, visit discoverireland.ie