Full-Day Foraging Course, Northallerton

This course is designed to be an introduction to foraging, focusing on giving you the knowledge and confidence to start and fast-track your foraging journey, but it covers many more species than on a half-day course and goes into greater depth. It also comes with a delicious 3-course foraged lunch! As always with my courses, 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.

The day begins just before 10 AM with a casual, relaxed meet and greet. We then take a two-and-a-half-hour walk (covering one to two miles) around the grassland and open woodland of a private farm, stopping regularly to discuss, gather and/or 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 morning session will cover:

• A brief introduction to myself and foraging in general.
• Finding and discussing around 20 species common across the UK that have food uses.
• 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!

We’ll then have a 3-course lunch, which will include some foraged goodies and may even include some of what we’ve gathered from the morning! If it is raining during the lunch part of the day a tarp shelter is provided.

After a delicious taste of the wild, we move on to the afternoon session, which includes:

• A practical walk-through of my favourite foraging books and how best to use them.
• Finding and discussing at least 10 further species common across the UK that have food uses.
• Foraging for non-food uses, such as medicinal uses, and finding natural plant fibres to make natural string or rope!
• Learning about “forest bathing” and the importance of trees from a foraging perspective.
• Going deeper on some of the topics we covered in the morning, including identification skills and toxicity.

We will aim to finish around 3:30 – 4:00 PM.

Across the day, we will cover about 3.5 miles and certainly no more than 4 miles. The route is mostly flat, and we’ll go at a steady pace.

After the course, I will send a follow-up email to participants with a summary of the species we found and other useful information, including a summary of my recommended books for further reading.

Foraging is fun and fascinating, with so many benefits it's unbelievable. 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 the respect nature deserves. During the course, I will show you how to approach foraging in a way whereby you don't just minimise but eliminate all risks, so you are free to enjoy the multitude of benefits that foraging brings into your life - and there are many!

The experience has foraging at its heart, but it will also immerse you in nature and facilitate a connection to nature, leading to many physical and mental health benefits.

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, foraging is incredibly natural – this is one of the reasons it feels so good!

I believe that people and society would benefit enormously from taking a subtle step towards nature and a simultaneous step back from technology and our digital world. 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 this course we will log off from the modern world and log in to nature!

For this course, we will make use of a private farm location – Avenue Farm, Boroughbridge Road, DL7 9EP – though please note that following this postcode on Sat Navs or Google Maps won’t take you precisely to Avenue Farm, so please use the below Google Maps “dropped pin” location instead if you can:

Dropped pin:

You can park at the farm, and I will advise you exactly where to park on your arrival.

• Comfortable, weather-appropriate clothing and footwear. Ideally bring some waterproofs unless the weather forecast indicates a 0% chance of rain for the whole day. Our route will cover about 3.5 miles and certainly no more than 4 miles. However, large parts of the route will be grassy and with the morning dew or any recent rain, it may be wet grass, so please ensure you have appropriate footwear, otherwise you may get wet socks!
• 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.
• A snack and refreshment of some kind if you wish, though note lunch and some refreshments are provided, so this isn’t essential but just something to bring if you think you might like it as an extra energy boost at some point during the day!

As I’m sure you can appreciate with the nature of the environment we will be in, there are no official toilets at any point along the route, so there are a couple of options available for toilets:

• Embracing what I call a “wild wee” (there will be plenty of secluded and private places to go).
• Waiting until lunchtime because during the lunch part of the day, we will have access to a proper toilet.

Please let me know if you have any dietary requirements for the lunch part of the day, such as allergies (e.g. nuts, gluten, etc.) or dietary preferences (e.g. vegan, etc.).

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.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Avenue Farm, Boroughbridge Road, Northallerton, United Kingdom