6 articles
Shelters, fire, knots, tools and navigation without GPS: the skills of outdoor living, with the rules that come with them.
Bushcraft is the art of feeling at home outdoors with very little: putting up a shelter, lighting a fire where it is allowed, tracking down water and finding your way back. It relies on practice and patience far more than on kit. Survival skills are the same toolbox, put to work when a trip does not go to plan. You will find no end-of-the-world scenarios and no tough-guy posturing here, just practical skills explained simply, with the rules that govern them.
The section covers how to pitch a tarp or build a shelter without damaging the woodland, and how to tie a knot that holds yet comes undone when you want it to. It also covers choosing, sharpening and safely handling a knife or a saw, and finding your way with a map, a compass or the sun. Water gets particular attention: where to look for it, how to treat it, and what filter standards actually guarantee. Then come signalling for help, reading animal tracks and signs, and packing a rucksack or a small survival kit.
Every skill comes with its rules, and we quote them from the official texts, with the date we checked them. A fire cannot be lit just anywhere or at any time: seasonal restrictions, the landowner’s permission and the alternatives when it is wiser to go without. Nor can a knife be carried as you please, so we explain what the law says about carrying and transporting one, with a box for Scotland, England and Wales, Northern Ireland or Ireland when the law differs. Every article in this section is reviewed by Outfarer’s editor before publication and spells out the risks clearly.
Risky techniques are not learnt from an article, so when it matters we point you towards a course or a club. Figures such as a filter’s flow rate or the length of a blade are explained and tied to their source, and kit is compared on the specifications its manufacturers publish. The section is for curious newcomers planning their first night under a tarp, for regular practitioners refining their skills, and even for knife collectors, who may find the legal chapters sobering reading.
BushcraftPractical guide
To pitch a tarp and run a camp, six knots are enough: the bowline, the taut-line hitch, the clove hitch, two half hitches, the timber hitch and the square lashing. Here is how to tie each one, what it does, the usual mistake and how to undo it, with a sheet to print. These are camp knots: none of them is for belaying anyone, yourself included.
Guillaume Hoarau··15 min
A-frame, lean-to, diamond or closed: which tarp pitch to choose for wind and rain, with or without trees, and what keeps it taut all night.
Guillaume Hoarau··16 min
Take a bearing from the map, follow it in the mist and correct for declination: the method step by step, with today’s values in Britain and beyond.
Guillaume Hoarau··8 min
112, emergency texts, apps, satellite SOS, beacons: what works to raise the alarm with little or no mobile signal, country by country.
Guillaume Hoarau··10 min
Campfires in France: banned in or within 200 m of woodland unless you own the land, seasonal bans, fire danger maps and leave-no-trace fires where allowed.
Guillaume Hoarau··6 min
Boil, filter, disinfect or use UV: what each method really removes, according to the WHO and the CDC, and how to choose where to fill your bottle.
Guillaume Hoarau··10 min
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