A guided walk exploring Bristol's Sea Mills and Avon Gorge, learning and foraging wild edible plants, trees & fungi.

Small group.

Affordable price.

Convenient duration.

Easily reachable.

A guided walk through Sea Mills and the nearby Avon Gorge, learning to identify and forage wild edible plants, trees and fungi with Heath Bunting — wild food forager, organic grower, and long-time leader of these walks.

Sea Mills sits where the River Trym meets the strongly tidal River Avon: a Roman port (Portus Abonae), later an early 18th-century wet dock whose Grade II listed walls still stand, and now a quiet tidal viewpoint beside an interwar garden suburb. The harbour mouth, mud, reed and stream corridor support waders, kingfishers, eels, trout and otter, while a short walk links you toward the Gorge, Downs and remnant parkland such as Old Sneed Park. The walk treats this layered landscape as both pantry and classroom.

What the walk covers

Expect a practical 1.5-hour (or similar) session focused on what is actually growing and in season. Typical themes include:

- Identification and modest, personal-use foraging of wild edibles (the “Four Fs” — fruit, fungi, flowers, foliage — from plants growing wild), plus trees and common fungi where present

- Sustainable picking: take little, leave plenty, stay off planted or recovering ground, never uproot without permission

- Bushcraft and simple survival skills

- Medicinal plants in folk tradition and their limits

- Poisonous lookalikes (hemlock water-dropwort, deadly nightshade, foxglove, yew and others)

- Wild saponin plants used as traditional soaps (soapwort and related species)

- Cultivation, cuttings and seed collection/sowing for local genetics

- Food processing and preservation (drying, freezing, jams, fermenting)

- Climate adaptation, rewilding and how small urban sites can still support wildlife

- Indigenous / historic human use of these habitats

Groups are kept small. The tone is hands-on and place-specific rather than a lecture.

Practical details

Kids (often 15 or under) go free. Dogs are welcome. Wear seasonal, all-weather clothing and sturdy footwear; paths can be muddy and the ground is uneven. Moderate fitness is required.

The site is free and open; there are typically no toilets or bins — take rubbish home. Foraging here is subject to national law (Theft Act 1968 s.4(3), Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981) and local park/open-space byelaws: personal, non-commercial picking of common wild plants is generally allowed where you have lawful access; uprooting, commercial collection, protected species and designated-site restrictions are not. Follow the guide’s lead and local practice.

About the walk leader

Heath Bunting (Bristol-based artist and forager) has run guided walks in Avon Gorge, Sea Mills, Brandon Hill and Hampstead Heath for over twenty years. He frames urban nature as a working landscape for knowledge-sharing, access and everyday provisioning.

Bring curiosity and a bag for a small personal harvest if conditions allow.

Contact 07935 986 421 if lost or delayed.

Meet at Sea Mills Railways Station, Sea Mills, Bristol BS9 1DX

Email heathbunting@irational.org for group bookings.

Description supplied by the event organiser.