Focusing on giving you the knowledge and confidence to start your foraging journey, connecting you to nature and improving wellbeing.

Half-Day (£40) foraging course for beginners and intermediates. Children under 12 come free (within reason, and please let me know in advance), and well-behaved dogs on a lead are more than welcome.

What to expect

We’ll take a 2.5-hour guided foraging walk (covering about 1 mile), stopping regularly to discuss (and where possible, eat!) the many edible goodies we find along the way, whether that be foliage, flowers, fruits, nuts or mushrooms! What we’ll find depends on the time of year. The route is largely flat but there are some rolling hills involving up-and-down sections, but we’ll go at a gentle pace.

The main focus will be foraging for wild food, but we will also touch upon medicinal or “bushcraft” uses if relevant to what we find.

Half-Day Course will include:

A brief introduction to myself and foraging in general.

Finding and discussing around 15 species common across the UK.

How to identify the species we come across.

Information about toxic species to avoid.

Foraging laws and principles to ensure you forage legally, safely and responsibly.

Trying a couple of pre-prepared wild food-based samples!

A follow-up email to participants with a summary of the species we found and other useful information, such as my recommended books for further reading.

Making foraging fun and safe

Foraging is fun and fascinating, with so many benefits! It’s as safe as anything when approached with the right level of caution, awareness, and knowledge. It’s important to realise, however, that foraging can be dangerous IF you approach it with a lack of caution (recklessness), and/or a lack of awareness of the risks and without the respect nature deserves. During the course, I will show you how to approach foraging so you don’t just minimise but eliminate all risks, so you are free to enjoy the many benefits that foraging brings to your life – and there are many!

Log in to nature

Humans have been foraging as a way to survive for hundreds of thousands of years. Before farming, this was how we survived – finding what nature provided in harmony with the seasons and the land. This period before farming forms over 95 per cent of our existence as a species, so to our brains and bodies, wild food foraging feels incredibly natural – which is one of the reasons it feels so good!

Foraging is one of the best ways to disconnect from our busy modern lives of emails, social media and technology, and reconnect with nature and our ancestral roots. During our foraging walks, we will log off from the modern world and log in to nature!

Meeting Point and Parking

For this course, we’ll meet on the corner of William Street (HD4 5RT) and Ivy Street. This is a residential area but from here we can very quickly walk into a moorland and open woodland environment.

There is off-road parking if needed on William Street, Ivy Street, and many other nearby streets. The 328 bus stops nearby too.

Google Maps "dropped pin" location for our exact meeting point is: https://goo.gl/maps/Hxg8MxArV8yZK1MB6 (https://goo.gl/maps/Hxg8MxArV8yZK1MB6)

I recommend you bring

Comfortable, weather-appropriate clothing and footwear. Our route isn't long - we often only cover a mile on the half-day course, but it is a walking/hiking trail, so some sections could be muddy and uneven, and some sections of the route are also hilly, so please ensure you have appropriate footwear.

Your phone but only for the camera function should you wish to take any photos/videos/notes. I will however send out an email at the end of the course with a list of the species we come across.

Some water or another hydrating drink if you wish.

About me

The Forager Within, founded by James Hill, runs public and private foraging courses across Yorkshire and Manchester. His love of foraging started on nature walks with his parents, where picking wild food was just a way of life. In adulthood, James hit a low point in 2015, which re-ignited a passion for foraging. By the Spring of 2016, foraging was a hobby, an obsession, and then in 2022, a business with a mission to connect people to nature and improve physical and mental health in the process.

Description supplied by the event organiser.