By Vicky Allan

This was how it began: with an idea (thanks editor) that I should be sent away to suffer as New Year laughing fodder, to be put through my paces on a survival course in a manner that would highlight to you, the reader, the ease and convenience of your festive indulgence as well as possibilities of outdoor deprivation as an alternative detox. Forget the spa, there's always the running stream and bivouac. It wasn't clear what I was being punished for, but I duly went ahead and booked myself on to the only survival weekend I could find at this time of year.

Survival & Safety, run by Alan Finlay, offers one of the few courses that seem to face out the winter weekend after weekend, running through the short days, through the snow, wind, hail. They could fit me in for a 3 day course in late December. This happened to be a weekend when back home in Edinburgh, there were 3 parties, central heating at the flick of a switch, and a double duvet bedding system I have developed for the winter months. Even a possible man duvet, though that had gone down with the flu.

Exchange all that for a sleeping bag (not of the alpine 4 seasons variety),  and the possibility of being surrounded by a bunch of military-obsessed Rambos who believe the world is about to end? Oh yeah. Love to.

Fortunately the cold snap that was threatening hasn't quite snapped when Alan picks me up from the station in Ayr. Ex-Mod, sporting a battered gamekeeper cap and a brush of moustache, he is a little coy about his past, what he actually did in the army,  A spread of tattoos covers his forearms. Once many years ago he tried to see what it would be like to go without food, and lasted 18 days. The experience left him with stomach ulcers.

He may be a one-time soldier, but his course, he promises, is no military boot camp, and is more about learning through having a laugh and a bit of innuendo. There are, he tells me, quite a few other women on the courses. Far from being a male-dominated activity, survival training is becoming increasingly feminised. In the past 5 or 6 years male ratios have gone from 90:10 to 6:4 and he believes soon more women will be attending than men.

We are six. A quick glance round reveals no Rambos. Steve and Rachael have driven up from Yorkshire and wear matching camouflage jackets. Rachael, it turns out, bought the trip for Steve as a birthday present and only told him about it the night before, in Pizza Hut. She had, she said, originally wanted to take him kayaking and only stumbled across the course on the web. Then there's Ailsa and Gordon, who both work for Hewlett Packard, and who I assume are a couple, but later find are just bickering good friends. The lack of matching jackets should have been the dead giveaway. Finally, Ian, 19 years old, a student in civil engineering. The practical sort, eccentric and independent, he lives on his own in a house just outside Glasgow while his parents live abroad. He is good at lighting fires. He can also fire dance.

Within half an hour of arrival, a cardboard box is pulled out. Alan wants any contraband placed in there: alcohol. sweets. chocolate, crisps, drugs. He gives a long stare and I find myself confessing to having a hip flask of brandy and 2 snickers bars. Gordon admits to an extensive chocolate collection which he really brought for Ailsa, who says she doesn't want chocolate. 

First lesson, he says, never give any of your possessions to anyone. Next lesson: Kit, What we might need while we're out there, what we've already got, whats available on the market and how to adapt seemingly innocent personal items for extreme conditions.

"Don't look at a thing," he says, "just as what it is." Sealskin socks, for instance, adapt to become a water carrier in an emergency situation, but are primarily for keeping your feet entirely dry: "If your feet go down out there, you're in a world of trouble." A plastic cup can be used for a container for heating water in. An old fashioned dial watch can be used as a compass: point the hour hand towards the sun and halfway between 12 and the hand will be south. His survival tin contains, among other things, a tampon and a condom. "Is that just for regular use?" I ask pointing at the condom. "And what is its regular use?" he says. "Wait and see." (Later it will be revealed that the condom is a water carrier and the tampon a firelighter.)

Knives: considerations when choosing one. He bends a large knife till it looks on the verge of breaking. "If you are going to buy something," he says, "buy something that is not designed for a kiddies toy box" "We've all got a knife, haven't we?" "I've just got a pen-knife," I say. "Oops." Its already starting to get dark by the time we reach the woodland where we are going to camp for the night, and too late to build our own shelters. Finlay shows us some examples he has built before, then hangs a parachute down from the trees. This, he says, is going to be our tent for the night. All we have to do, in the last dimming light of day, is fetch water from the stream and build a fire. Already gender roles are starting to emerge. Women fetch water, men build fire. 

Round the fire there is more talk of emergency situations.  A team member is injured; do you just leave them behind and look after "number one"?

    Meanwhile, Finlay seems suspicious of me. He considers me to be a "spy in our midst" and takes to calling me the Blair Witch. When asked certain questions by the others, he says, "I would tell you, but not given the present company". He does however, tell us a little bit about his career history. He first got interested in survival training when he was in the army and found the short course they were given was limited and unsatisfactory. Later he went on to teach corporate groups but has now moved on to the public. "I held off," he says, "buts what the difference between corporate and public? The good thing about the public is they all want to be here."

Finlay is lewdly funny and always keen to make a joke around almost any task. Really, I suspect his most important survival tin to be the small battered metallic box with a psychedelic pattern containing a neat battalion of roll-ups, all carefully made, perfectly crisp and round. Even while gutting a rabbit, he is hardly ever without one, tucked slyly in the corner of his mouth. "Someone," he says, "asked me the question, 'Do you prepare for things?' You're going to step across a road. You look up and down, thats you preparing for what you're about to do. Into your car, seatbelt on, you look in the mirror, you indicate, you're preparing. Why do assholes wander off without preparing? Why do folks do outdoor events without preparing for it? You put an effort into everything else in your life."

Night comes up and I'm the first one to bed. The only other time I've slept out in the open in winter was when I was doing an article on the naked rambler and I woke at 3.00am thinking that possibly my feet had dropped off and there would be no further rambling, naked or otherwise. I survived, but didn't sleep. This time its warmer. But this time I haven't drunk half a bottle of wine and somehow despite being the first to bed down I find myself by the entrance to the parachute where a big draft is blowing in. I sleep in short snatches. When morning comes, Ian has already lit the fire and Finlay is lurking outside the parachute waiting for us, coffee cup in hand.

He likes he says, to listen to the conversation from outside. He is the king of double entrendre. He hears them everywhere and I seem to be unable to open my mouth without dropping one. Over trout-gutting for breakfast, he slices quickly along the underside of the fish. "I've only got a pen-knife," I say. "I'm only using a pen-knife". "Yeah, but you've got quite a big one haven't you?" "My knife's not bad either."  I begin my own bit of trout gutting. It is a struggle. I have a cold, the last remains of a flu, still unremittingly dribbling out on to increasingly damp pieces of toilet roll. "Why don't you just stick the whole toilet roll up your nose and be done with it?" says Finlay. Before long its done and we cook the trout on hot rocks in the fire. After food comes shelter. The day is not long and he suggests we start to build our home for the night. "You can go wherever you want," he says.

In fact, he rarely leaves us to our own devices. As we wander round the forest looking for our patch, he is ever hanging around in the background, waiting to give us a hint, which we immediately jump on and execute like it's captains orders. It's as if he is pressing a button and seeing how fast we react. "People think," he says at one point, "they have choices. They don't really have them." It's his way of helping us along and attempting to prompt us into thinking in a slightly different way. My different way of thinking is to choose to camp with Ailsa and Gordon, on the principle that, as 007 would agree, you can't beat "shared bodily warmth" even if it is through 2 layers of sleeping bag.

This also means that they do most of the shelter construction while I go off and have my photograph taken while performing various action-girl tasks. It means too, that I am fresh and ready when it gets to late afternoon and time to skin, gut and consume the next animal.

Finlay places a rabbit down on a stump.  All you want to do basically is just rip the skin off. You don't need a knife to do it. What you're looking for is a gap that you can get your hands in and tease it away. Just work it with your fingers. Take its jammies off. It will smell a wee tad." Ailsa hovers in the background. "You know," she says, "that's it. I've turned the corner. I've been thinking about being a vegetarian for ages."

Nothing, you quickly realise, is easy in the outdoors. Food that in the shops comes ready-cooked and remoulded to look as un-animal like as possible, is now all too fleshy and smelly. Water has to be fetched. Even chopping the wood doesn't seem that easy a process. Finlay's sons seem to have mastered the fine art, but when Gordon tries to teach me, a small disaster follows. He yelps as a piece of wood vaults upward, slicing a piece of skin from his thumb. By day 3 the listing of fast foods has begun. Pizza, Chinese. we begin to salivate over the thought of chips and gravy. "Chips and gravy we can do," says Finlay, "Go to your rushes/reeds and pull them up. The root system - thats your potato substitute. Gravy we can make from the meat. You aren't actually looking for chips are you? You are sad."

The worst comes last, when our resistance has been worn down, so eroded by a series of guttings, dissections and maulings of scale, fur and feather, that, by the time the tub of 'sweeties' comes out, it seems we could possibly be persuaded to eat anything. There should probably be a disclaimer here for vegetarians and those of a sensitive disposition. In the first box are crickets dusted with flour. In the second meal worms still rolling and squirming over each other, jawheaded and stub-legged. The course leader offers one up to be eaten live. You have to crunch quickly, he warns, because they bite the inside of your mouth. Steve the first to take the plunge, picks one up, sticks it in, then spits it out almost immediately. Next, Ailsa, she crunches and swallows, barely wrinkling her face. I stuff one in. It tastes vaguely like a pulverised hazelnut.

'If he had given it to me on day one,'"Steve says 'I'd have said no way. Sticking a bug in your mouth? You've got to be joking. But it seemed okay. I thought the crickets tasted oatmealy. Quite a nice last thing to do."

Cont............

Extracts from emails below:

VICKY'S PERSONAL THOUGHTS PLUS OTHER PARTICIPANTS ON SAME COURSE

Hi Alan,

Hope you had a good Christmas. Turkey lunch almost lived up to our herald pheasant but not quite.

Thanks for all your help and for such a funny and enjoyable few days.

Vicky Allan

 Hi Alan,

Just a note to say thanks again for a wonderful weekend - although the aroma  of campfire still lingers (despite 2 showers!) and I'm sure that I can still taste crickets / worms, I really enjoyed myself and feel strangely relaxed.

So much so, that it was really quite difficult to sleep indoors last night! 

It's one of the best weekends away that I've ever had, and I'll definitely be back...

Best Regards (and thanks to your lads too)....... Ailsa

Hi Alan,

Cheers for the course, had a brilliant time, every second. Although I can feel all the techniques fading away, I took away something far more valuable - a f......g big knife!

 No but really, it was more to do with nature, the importance of understanding it and yourself. The heat a small ember of knowledge can provide if you nuture it properly. I know you know what i'm talking about, so I won't go on about it.

The way you run the course is truly unexpected and perfectly suited. It has been an inspiration, and this will not be my last time in the wild. I want to do a lot more of this sort of thing, and if one of my friends was willing - I would take them with me, however there lies the problem - who on earth is going to trust me?

So I am very interested in doing an instructors course, can you give me some more info about it?

 Cheers, Ian  Glasgow                                           P.S. Can I have a wee peek at the photos?

Hi Alan,

I just wanted to say thanks for a great weekend, I really enjoyed myself!! It seemed strange returning to "civilisation" afterwards!!

I came away from the course with some useful new skills (although I'm not sure how often I'll end up dissecting Pheasants for breakfast), and feeling more confident about getting of the "beaten track" in the future.

I would definitely go on this type of course again, maybe a longer one next time,

Thanks again to you, Alan Jr and Chris for an enjoyable time, and a bloody good laugh!!!

Rachael

Alan,

It was probably the most fun thing I have done in years. 8 out of 10! **)

You may post this reply and quote me in context.

Positives..

The course struck a very good balance of what can & cannot be taught in a few days.

It most definitely was not boot camp, in fact it was probably one of the most humorous and relaxed courses I have ever participated in. Having spent some time around "military" types, I was really surprised at just how much fun and relaxed the whole approach was. Our instructors Alan and his sons Chris and  Alan "Jr" were all extremely competent and genuinely interested in fieldcraft; this is not just a job to them!

They were all very helpful, "jumping" in to give advice when necessary, yet having the experience to know when to "take a back seat" and let me make my own mistakes.

All the instructors were competent and skilled, I felt completely safe, knowing I was in expert hands. I particularly liked the fact that it was not just a bushcraft course, it subtly focused on the mindset of a "survivor" (probably the most valuable tool to have with you in a life threatening situation). The concepts of keeping things simple, trying to look beyond the obvious usages for an object, not wasting valuable calories - [you may not eat tonight]; were all subtly drilled in.

I learned these lessons the hard way; I constructed what I thought was a great shelter, it took me approx 3 hours and an enormous amount of calories to build it. Alan informed me that for one evenings stay, I wasted too much effort both in calories and time, in a real survival situation I may not have eaten that night. Luckily this was a controlled environment and I was going to eat that night, I wont make that mistake again....

It was the small things that made the biggest impact to me, the concepts of KISS were enforced over and over again. For example the simplicity of cooking fish on hot bed of stones instead of constructing a fancy wooden fork ( as seen on TV ). It may look "cool" but if your fish falls into the fire your going hungry!

Negatives..

None really, however you could have told us we stunk...!

Would I do it again?

 Absolutely ! I would love to do a longer course (if you'll have me back) - maybe on my next birthday!

Steve

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