Could You Make It Through Coastal Survival Training?

Worried your cosy urban existence has deprived you of something essential? Then perhaps you need to learn to live off the land and sea on a coastal survival course. Just be ready to weave.

- Chris Horton

My bushcraft instructor is standing over me, glowering, as a tempest rages in the evening gloom. “Face the pain,” Fraser Christian barks. “Find your inner hunter!”

My rite-of-passage moment has arrived. I’d been expecting it during my five days camped on the Dumfries coast learning hunter-gatherer skills. But as a squeamish pescatarian who balks at killing flies, I’d imagined that when it came I’d be spattered in blood, whacking a fish to death. Not sitting on my backside in a tipi, basket-weaving.

Still barely half-complete, the crooked nest of twigs in front of me is a grotesque parody of the tightly woven willow fish traps my nine Complete Coastal Hunter Gatherer coursemates had conjured up that afternoon as we beavered away under the awning of the mess tent. Only a suicidally stupid fish could fail to squeeze through the gaps appearing in its tapered sides as I struggle to twist the buckling willow canes into ever-decreasing circles.

There’d been a moment of light relief — my sorry effort making a brief cameo as a hat when I photobomb my victorious coursemates as they pose for Fraser’s camera. But it’s followed by a pang of envy when I’m ordered to soldier on alone as they set off down the lane to Port O’Warren Bay clutching their traps. Baited with crushed baby crabs and wedged between rocks, the traps await a potential banquet of fishy visitors on the evening tide — Fraser having caused expectation levels to soar by assuring us “an 8lb conger eel doesn’t read the label” when asked what they might entice.