Wild Food

Sussex foraging masterclass

It’s a sunny evening in the South Downs of Sussex. The outlook is good, unless you happen to be a snail confronted with a sliver of garlic and a white wine shower. As I chew over the results of just such a meeting, the fireside crackling away to the accompaniment of idle chatter between strangers, life certainly looks good. Even the snails look good. Now that’s something you don’t hear much these days.

WideWorld has just arrived at a beautiful hideaway: Safari Britain, a collection of bell tents and yurts, nestled in the elbow of a remote chalk valley, where we’ve been invited to take part in a evening course on wild food. The menu might alarm even the curious, but the setting is relaxing enough to put the camp’s complement of guests – ranging from the local vicar to a BBC film crew – at their ease.

Safari Britain is part of what you could say is a new trend in camping in UK. Not luxury in the static-caravan-sense, but certainly a step up from most tourist-packed sites. Each bell tent has an ample foam mattress, wind-up lantern and real sheets and duvets. The communal yurts are devoted to a laid-back lounge and well-stocked kitchen. And smack in the middle is a giant fire pit that’s just crying out to be sat around.

Even the bathrooms are a bit of a masterstroke: a composting loo with a view over the fields to a stone folly (using the field glasses strung over one the framed prints in the loo, you can even make out the car parked over there), twinned with a delightful wooden cubicle shower beneath a spreading beech tree. There’s a wood burner for heating water, meaning hot outdoor showers in the morning.

But all this is just the trimmings. What Dan, co-owner of Safari Britain, really loves to do is educate his campers. Really. With courses as diverse as bat-spotting and life drawing (they assure me that a Serbian gym instructor can be provided to pose in a yurt wearing nothing but oil), they’re trying to claim back camping with a purpose.....

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