CCF Survival Skills

In the first session, we learned how to tie knots; the alpine butterfly is my favourite – very useful if you are climbing with ropes. In the next session we learned to use knives to prepare sticks for the fire and make kindling by shaving flakes of wood. We also learned to light fires and how to find dry sticks in wet weather. The most memorable session was the one where we prepared and cooked fresh pheasant; it was a bit gory, but it was fun, and it tasted like chicken ... sort of. The next week, we learned how to lay traps and snares, of which there are four types: mangle, dangle, tangle and strangle. I loved making the snares, it was very fun, and it may be useful one day, although I think it might be illegal to set them in England!

For the final session, we had an overall assessment of our skills, which was also a competition to see which team would perform best in a survival scenario. We were divided into groups and we had to make a fire and a shelter, filter some water, make a snare, and come up with a rescue plan.

Our group was a bit slow to start but everything came together in the end. Our shelter was pretty good, able to fit our whole team, our fire was steady, and we got full marks for our snare, which I made! We filtered the dirty water through the neck of a bottle that we had filled with moss and cotton wool, and it actually came out fairly clear. A few more times through and it would have been drinkable. We also made a giant SOS shape out of materials we found, so planes flying over would have been able to see it and hopefully rescue us. Overall, I think we did a really good job so well done to the team I was on!

I’ve really enjoyed learning survival skills this term, so thank you so much to the CCF staff for organising it. It was a great experience and I know we all learned a lot. Hopefully there will be more chances to do this activity in the future, and I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who gets the opportunity to take part.

Amélie Abbott-Barrington, Fifth Form