With so much negativity and anxiety in the media recently, here at The Adventure Service, we wanted to share something positive with you all. Our wonderful Outdoor Instructor, Amanda Clifton, has successfully achieved her IOL Bushcraft Competency Award. We are all so proud of her and how well she has done. Well done Amanda, you believed in yourself and achieved your potential through adventure!
Amanda has written us a little bit of something to inform us on how the day went!
“My Bushcraft Competency Assessment was on Tuesday 17th March. The day started off with a meet and greet with another gentleman and the assessor. First thing we had to do is make three different fires using three different items of our choice. So, my first one was the fire steel (ferrocium rod fire steel) and silver birch bark. This fire had to be self-sustaining for 5 minutes. My other fire was using a flint and steel with char cloth. Finally, my last one was a one match fire using feather sticks and birch brash.
After we then moved on to shelter building, where the assessor wanted us to build an A frame shelter with using sticks and explain what we would look out for when building a shelter. Just like the picture below. And then as a pair we were to cover it using bracken.
A quick cuppa before we made another fire. This time we had to use our bow drill (which a lot of time practicing went into!) and once we got an ember from this we put that into a tinder bundle (using dried cleavers/goose grass) and maintained the fire from this. We both were successful after a couple of attempts. I was knocking the ember everywhere! We then went onto doing some natural navigation with the shadow stick, explaining how we would use the stars and what we would look at with trees etc.
Dinner time, the most important time of the day! During this, we had a written paper test asking us some more in-depth questions about the different subjects. After this we went for a walk throw the woods where the assessor would point out 16 different trees. We then had to write them down along with two different uses. We had to get 10 correct to pass this part. When this was finished, we went onto doing water filtration using a bottle, cloth, sand, stones, pinecones and moss. We had to boil half a cup of water over yet another fire and explain the difference between filtering and purification.
Another cuppa, (we like our cuppas!) then we got on to showing our skills on how to make cordage out of lime and showing our two examples we made before going on the assessment.
Then finally we sat around the fire (lots of fire going on!) talking about how the day went. We both had PASSED! I was over the moon with this news as a lot of training and self training hours had gone into this.
Although the day was very intense (being assessed all day was daunting!) we also had learnt a lot of in-depth elements of Bushcraft along the way. Kev (the assessor) is such a lovely man, very keen to keep teaching others along the way and make you feel relaxed but also letting you know you are being assessed along the way.”
Once again, all of us here at TAS are very proud of Amanda and her achievement. You have grown from strength to strength since being at The Adventure Service and we couldn’t be prouder. Well done!
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