Knots and Seaweed: A Foraging and Stone Age Day Course – Friday 23 May 2025

£95.00

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 (bios below), 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.

Date: Friday, 23 May 2025. 

Time: 10:30am to 6.30pm. Arrival at the car park by 09:00am to be sure of a parking space, then a leisurely walk (20-30 minutes) to meet your guides on the shore. 

Venue: East Lothian coast. Directions will be sent after booking. Please note the location is not easily accessible by public transport this early in the day, so please advise well in advance if you need help with a car share.

Participants: Wear warm clothes, it will be cold so preferably a windproof layer. Importantly wear suitable waterproof, non-slip footwear (e.g. wellies), you will be on slippery rocks and in rock pools at times and will get wet feet. You will need to bring: a sharp knife, a packed lunch, snacks and drinking water. There are no public toilets so also bring tissue paper and a biodegradable bag (e.g. dog poo bag).

Maximum group size is 12.

Please note: This course is not suitable for dogs to accompany their owners.

If the walk has to be cancelled due to bad weather, you will be able to transfer this ticket to a future walk or get a refund. Please read the small print!

9 in stock

Description

An introductory course to coastal foraging and stone age techniques.

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.  

This course will be taught by Mo Wilde and Werner Pfeifer.

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.        

You may also like…