About Wild Woody

Wild Woody is a practical outdoors notebook. It covers bushcraft, fishing and nature in the UK, written plainly for people who are just getting started.

It began with simple questions. How do you get a fire going when everything is damp? Which knot holds a tarp tight all night? What made that track in the mud? The answers online were often buried in forum threads, padded out, or written for experts with a lot of expensive kit.

So the idea is simple: one clear guide per question, with the steps in order and the mistakes that catch most people out.

What you will find here

• Skills over kit. Most outdoor skills need very little gear. Where kit matters, the guides say what to look for, not what to buy.
• Short steps. Each guide answers the question first, then walks through it.
• Honest about what goes wrong. Every guide has a common mistakes section, because that is where most of the learning happens.
• Checked rules. Where the law is involved, such as fishing licences, the guides link to the official source so you can check the detail yourself.

Field notes

Alongside the guides, field notes are short entries from time outdoors: a photo and a few lines about what was tried and how it went.

Getting outdoors responsibly

Always get permission from the landowner before you fish, camp or light a fire, follow the Countryside Code, and leave places as you found them, or better.