DofE Open Gold Residential
Survival & Bushcraft

Detailed information

Aim

An adventure for young people in a unique woodland setting, offering a varied, interactive and fun experience.

You will be introduced to the woodland basecamp training area in which you will learn the core techniques of

First aid, Protection, Fire, Water, Navigation & Food

You will undertake activities as individuals and as small groups to ensure that you have a thorough grasp of the skills required.

Leading to the final 24 hour challenge where you will utilise all of your new skills to support yourself in the wild.

Skills

This DofE Gold Residential combines theory with real-life hands-on practical survival skills training. You will learn the knowledge and practical skills required to ensure personal safety and what the human body needs when faced with a range of extreme and challenging circumstances. Enabling short to medium term self-sufficiency that can be translated to any potential emergency or survival situation.

Building on this core training, we begin to explore the bushcraft skills that will allow you to become comfortable within a woodland basecamp. Cooking your meals over an open fire that you must build, ignite and manage.

The Key Elements

• First Aid, safety, safe use of tools

• Camp site rules and hygiene

• Fire lighting and safety around a fire

• Friction fire lighting

• Water purification

• Natural navigation

• Food preparation, cooking and storage

• Preparing game for cooking

• Core skills of survival

• Shelter building

• Embracing your environment

The 24 Hour Challenge

For the last 24hrs of the experience students will be encouraged to adopt the techniques, tools and materials of the survival training to live in the woodland, authentically relying on skills learned from the instructors during the first part of the week.

‘For the student that applies themselves fully, this would mean sleeping in a self-built natural shelter using a wool blanket, having prepared and cooked an evening meal on a self-lit fire using a friction technique. 

They will have processed and purified their own water and crucially they will have a grasp of natural navigation techniques, being able to orientate themselves during day or night and move themselves and their gear utilising an improvised pack frame.’ 

(Adam Logan)