This is a one day course learning about how our Mesolithic ancestors interacted with coast and estuary. Guided by expert forager, Monica Wilde and Werner Pfeifer, an authority in Stone Age skills, the course will include how you can use plant fibres to make string, ropes and nets, learning net knotting techniques and foraging for seaweed, coastal plants and molluscs.
In the morning, we will discuss and demonstrate how plant fibres were used to make string, ropes, crab pots and fishing nets. We will teach you how to make cordage and some fishing net knotting techniques, so you can make a small collecting net or basket. After lunch on the beach round a fire, we will spend the afternoon out at the low tide’s edge learning the seaweed species and foraging for coastal plants.
Note you will need to allow about 30mins of walking time to get to the venue before the course start time. We will send you the exact location on booking.
Monica ‘Mo’ Wilde is a passionate ethnobotanist who teaches the traditional uses of plants, seaweeds and fungi for wild food, medicine, craft, and the old ways of being and doing. Her experiment of living on only free wild food for a year, recorded in her award-winning book ‘The Wilderness Cure’, gave rise to The Wildbiome® Project – a fascinating ongoing research study into the health effects of a foraged diet.
Mo has a master’s degree in Herbal Medicine. She is a founder member of the Association of Foragers, a member of the British Mycological Society, the Society for Ethnobotany and a Fellow of the Linnean Society. Brought up in East Africa, Mo now lives in a wooden eco-house on a small rewilded patch of Central Scotland.
Werner Pfeifer was born and raised in Namibia, mainly in the bush, which fostered a lifelong love of wild things. Originally studying biology and geography, he once worked as a professional hunter, then a game ranger before becoming a tourist and bush guide in Namibia. He helped the Ju/’hoansi of the Kalahari set up their Living Museums and continues to work with them to preserve their traditions and ancestral skills. Werner has taught primitive and Stone Age skills for many years, being a leading specialist in everything regarding the North European Mesolithic period – the last hunter-gatherer time here.
In 2013, he built a Mesolithic settlement in the Steinzeitpark Dithmarschen (Stone Age Park) in North Germany where he currently works as a Stone Age teacher. Each year he also hosts the annual European Stone Age Gathering. Werner truly loves everything about nature, tracking, trapping, fishing, primitive skills and foraging. He is a patient teacher and an incredible source of ancestral knowledge.