Survival Camping in Primitive Shelters & Coastal Foraging (Scottish Highlands)

Luke, Tom and Nate here at the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel and today we're in the Highlands of Scotland and we're about to do a survival camping trip. We're going to build shelters, we're going to try to catch our own dinner, we're going to forge food. This is going to be awesome. You guys ready? See this is a special net that protects your head from the dogs. You see these no-seams are everywhere, they are gnats or whatever and so the boys have got themselves hoods and I might bust one out here too in a little bit but so far I'm doing okay. Nathan, what is that? My starting rock. You see when I move and it starts a fire. This class we're doing is through wildwoodbushcraft.com and Leon here is going to be our teacher. This man has bitten off more than he can chew. He is going to see if he can survive a four-year-old and a six-year-old. There's all these big black slugs here. I thought they were deer poop honestly. Oh you got a you got a whole fistful of slugs. Keep an eye out in the water for a sea otter. Also you might as I say we saw this big shoal of fish coming in today. Come on guys, keep going. Man it's just absolutely gorgeous scenery. Look at this. This is such a cool forest. Sometimes water runs down the tree and comes in. So we know that the rain doesn't get down here very much because it's already dry even though it's been raining all day. So we wouldn't have to build as much if we built a shelter here. Could you guys fit under there you think? You fit. You totally fit under there. What is this little clover? It looks like clover but it isn't clover. It's actually called wood sorrel. So it's quite sour. You've got that near your bed so that's quite good. So Leon gave me some great ideas. He said first things first. Lay down in it and kind of figure out where you're going to sleep and then try to level it out. A little layer of stuff here. That's pretty dry. I want to keep that dry. So Leon's suggestion to lay in my shelter was really good because it turned out right where I want to sleep. It's a big pointy rock. So I'm going to see if I can dig a little bit and get that rock out. There we go. That'll make life better. There we go. Okay, it's been raining like crazy. So in a futile effort to make it slightly drier, I'm trying to beat it off a little bit of the droplets. But we'll see if that does any good whatsoever. I'm going to jam up these holes with some logs and bracken. Use all the small sticks to fill up the holes like this. Hey daddy, look at that one. I see that one. That will be okay. You're having a sleeping bag? I wasn't going to, but these boys will. Hopefully it'll be a cool night and then you won't have any problems. I got these holes shoved up pretty tight. I think I'm ready to lay down my bedding. Then we'll get a roof on this thing. Got to try to stick the stem side deep in there. So I'm more on the leaves and less on the stem. About how many times a week do you do these classes? Is it pretty regular? Most days of the week at the moment. Figured the tree would be the big spoon. I'm going to jump in this pile of brush here and see what it looks like inside. Oh, that is dark. Well, there we go. We use a lot of ferns, but man, that looks pretty tight in there. It is pitch black inside and it's really warm. I get in there and my big old fat body is like a space heater in there. Despite the outside appearance, there's not a lot of space on the inside. It's packed pretty thick with insulation, so that should keep the rain off. Knock on wood, we'll have a pretty good night's rest in that. So we got this other shelter here made up for the boys. And you can see it's got a little bit more space in there and not bad at all. You can see what it looks like inside. You know, pretty nice. Plenty of room for two boys. So there you go. There's your sleeping bag. Got it in there. All right, we got the shelters built. Now we're going to go and try to get a fire going. Cook a little food before we put the boys to bed. All right, Tommy, you got some good, you got some good kindling there? Tommy has been talking nonstop about fatwood that he saw on the old YouTube. Do a little bit of work with my knife to make some really fine little, little, little pieces on here called a feather stick. It's quite fine. So it's like, smell that, smell that. Oh yeah. Probably smell it before. Mmm, piney. Where do you get your knife from? So I made this knife. Yeah? So we've got some bits here that they're kind of ready to go. So I can pick these up when I'm ready. So what I do when I'm lighting, I rest my hand on this and then I put a lot of pressure and then I shoot the sparks down on top of it. Then you don't end up smashing your kindling. I bet you'll get it first try. So you can put your piece in there now. Put it into the flame. Gently let, drop it. There you go. That's fatwood. Yeah, look how that burns. Yeah, that burns so well. All right. You want to, you want to shove your apple in that? Just rest it on that. See that? You know what you can dip in the hot chocolate? What? Digestives. I got a sneaky feeling it's going to be awesome. Apple's not hot anymore. Oh good. This is so good. Try it. Try a little bit of steak. That too hot? Is that good? Cooked steak, roasted apples and digestives. That's a, that's a pretty decent camping meal. I'm, I'm, uh, I'm pretty happy with that. But, uh, it's way past the boys' bedtime. So we're going to tuck them into their forts here in a little bit. And, uh, then I'll see you guys in the morning. Soggy socks. Those are the soggiest socks ever. All right, guys, you snuggled in good? Are you warm? Are you dry? Good. Well, the boys fell asleep immediately and now it's time for me to get to bed. I'm going to crawl in here and I'm going to bring the light, show you a little bit what it looks like inside. And I'm getting to bed. All right, let's get inside here. All right. Welcome to Home Sweet Home. Let me show you the, uh, the master bedroom. Yep. That's it. I am really, really warm right now. The ground's a little cold. And if there's one thing that I could improve, I really need more of a layer underneath me. We're just going to kind of suck it up and I'll see you guys in the morning and I'll let you know how it was. Well, good morning. It's 6am and, uh, didn't sleep half bad. Ground's a little hard, but it's, uh, warm in here. Unfortunately, I didn't quite make the shelter long enough. My feet are sticking out the door a little bit when I stretch out like this. And, uh, it's pretty cold outside and my, my toes are cold. And every once in a while, I get a little bit of a cold breeze come in through the door. So if I had to do it over again, I think I would, uh, make a plug for the door and make it a little bit longer. A little more padding wouldn't go amiss either. That's not so bad. That sure is a pretty spot. Isn't this amazing? This is what I'm waking up to. The most amazing part about camping here in Scotland is the laws. Anything that's open land, you can camp on it, hike on it, build a fire on it. It doesn't matter whether it's private or not. Just clean up after yourself. Use some common sense. And it's all fair game. If you're a backcountry enthusiast, this place is amazing. Look at that. There's a fish blitz going on right down there. And see just fish just erupting out of the water up there. I think we're going to do some fishing today. And that's, that's got my blood pumping. I'm going to see if I can get some wood together and get a little fire going. So the boys will have something warm to sit by when they get up. See if I can get some dry wood shavings. Got a little fire started. Now we're going to try to make some breakfast here. I heard something about seaweed and flatbread. So this is going to be interesting. The fire was actually made by me. Yeah, I used a flint and steel and a little cobble to get some practice. But I got the cobble on fire. Cool stuff, buddy. Guys, you want to eat a limpet? This little thing is a limpet. We're going to catch and eat one. So it's a surprise that we have to like come up quietly. And then just give them a kick and they'll come off the rock. So nearly all the brown seaweeds are racks of some kind. And this is sometimes known as gut weed. It's supposed to resemble intestines when it's like in the water. We call it seagrass as well. Yes, that's an edible periwinkle. A periwinkle? Edible periwinkle. Yeah, or winkle. You could eat it raw, although it's better. It's more safe to cook it. Is that a big limpet or is that just a shell? You can see he's just bunking over the rock. First thing you have to take the gut off. There we go. A little bit of raw libbet. It's crunchier than I thought. Yeah. Teeth kind of sink into it. An irony tip. Yeah, like a blood. A little bit like a nosebleed. Yeah, a little bit, yeah. But in a good way. Some people really like them raw. Some people are not keen. It wasn't my favorite raw thing I put in my mouth, but it wasn't bad. Yeah, definitely a little bit of nosebleed in there. Pick some of the seaweed. I really want to eat a ton of seaweed. Two handfuls each, that'll do it. Seagrass. Yeah, put it in there. Mix it all up really well, like mixing cement. I'm doing the old-fashioned way. You're doing it the old-fashioned way? Yeah. That looks yummy. Ready to dump it in? Put it in there, buddy. Okay, put it in there. None of these things are exact, so. About like that? A little bit more. Yeah, about half of it. Yeah, that's fine. All right. Right there, isn't it? All right. No, not bad. That's the kind of thing. Yeah. I'll throw a little salt and pepper in it, but that's good. There's our little seaweed cake. I would put it limpets, bannock. That's my ranking right now for things I've put in my mouth this morning. All right, just finished up breakfast, so now we're going to do some fishing, which I'm super excited about. And Leon's got some kind of survival fishing gear, and I'm cheating a little bit. Grabbed my Daiwa surf rod real quick, and we're going to go around the coast here and see if we can't catch any fish. Yeah, look, there are fish in there. Look at this, they're right, look in here. I caught them. We're going to try some fish in here. We saw some bait. Oh, look right there. Just popping right there all over the place. So you can see all these little bait fish dead in the seaweed here. What happened is that high tide, they jumped out of the water to get away from the pollock or whatever's eating them. Got this little pot here. Got a little spinner on it. This is like what we do with the water bottles. We're going to see if we can catch a pollock or something with this. Survival surf fishing. Yeah, there we go. Little pollock, man. There's a little fish and chip right there. What'd you catch, Tom? Why don't you check him in the water since he's still alive? Maybe he'll attract more pollock. Good job. Oh yeah, he just swam off. All right, Nate, you want to catch a fish? It's a pollock. Put him in there. Keep him fresh. There you go. Oh, you got him. Yeah, that's you. Another pollock. Oh, he's big. Look at this, Tom. That was so much fun. But the rain's getting serious on us. So we're going to head back to camp to get a little dry. Yeah, let's see what this guy's been eating. Lots, lots of little fish. There we go. Buddy, you love munching that wood churro? See, Nathan, look. That's how you get some clean water. We're going to drink 10p. Oh, chocolate caramel digestive in hot chocolate, man. That's match made in heaven. Time to cook up our haggis here because we are in Scotland. And so you've got to have campfire haggis. Nathan, you want to try some haggis? No. You know this is made with like sheep lungs and sheep hearts and sheep stomachs. It actually smells quite nice. It smells like a sausage. All right, this fish is looking pretty done. The eyes turned all white and cloudy and he's got a little grease coming out of his nose. There we go. There you go. That's perfect. Try that. Do you want to try that? It's a bit cold. Do you want to try some haggis? Here, try that. I would call it like meaty sausage granola. It's kind of like this crunchy texture. It reminds me of warm granola. Smells like sausage and kind of tastes like sausage. What do you got there? What are you eating? You're eating more haggis? You are turning into a Scotsman. We finished our haggis and pollock lunch and we're going to go explore a little cove down the way and we're going to cut through the woods and do a little foraging along the way and just do a little exploring. So it's a chanterelle. Oh yeah, chanterelle. It's a nice mushroom. It's a good edible mushroom and it's got sometimes a bit of a smell of fruit. Smell of apricots. Kind of. Yeah, kind of. Your typical mushroom smell. No, no, that definitely doesn't smell like a button mushroom. See, do you want to see him? Yeah. It's a wee Scottish frog. It's just like the wet conditions. Wood sorrel is here. That's clover. Oh, okay. So clover and wood sorrel. Yeah, wood sorrel with a heart-shaped leaf. Heart shape, see? This is kind of fairly round. Now, this is mountain ash. Is this? It's got to be cooked like a jelly. Rum and jelly, they call it. Oh, okay. I got you. So if you can eat it, you can try it if you want. It's a sour sort of tasting. It's called common sorrel. Common sorrel. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm getting that rhubarb taste. It's in the brittle cap family. So they're like brittle. And you can often see little teeth sticking out of here. Some of the ones with the red tops like this are called sickeners. So they make you feel sick. The ones that are sickeners all have a kind of hot, fiery taste called skullcap. Skullcap? Skullcap. And the reason it's called skullcap is because it's a kind of sleep-inducing plant. Oh. You have a little tea with it and it makes you sleepy. Oh. There you go. There's always water in Nathan's boots. Look at all those limpets. You knocked off a limpet. I want a limpet. I'm going to eat this guy. You're going to eat this guy? Oh, here we go. Ah, come here, Nate. I'm definitely going to eat that. Mom's going to see this video and be like, you guys are eating haggis and raw limpets and you won't eat what I make for you. You're going to have some explaining to do. You ready to eat your limpet? Yeah. Eat him? Like that? Good. You got it on the tidal pool? Make sure you put them all back, buddy. We're not going to eat those. Look at this view. Isn't this awesome? This coast is just beautiful. Bog myrtle or gale. Very pleasant aroma to it. Ninja roll? Well, guys, we taught you how to survive on your own. See you later. Try to step on the rocks and logs. Red deer right there. Well, guys, we have had an absolute blast on this camping trip, haven't we, guys? Now, listen, if you would like to do a trip like this, contact Liam Durbin with wildwoodbushcraft.com. I'll put a link in the description. Also, if you guys want to see more video from our three week trip to the UK, check out those videos. I'll put a link in the description to that as well. But anyway, thanks for watching. We hope you guys had a great time. If you want to see more videos like this, don't forget to click subscribe to the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel. We put out new videos every Saturday morning. Thanks for watching, guys. If you like this video, don't forget to check out the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel, where we have hundreds of videos just like this. And don't forget to click subscribe so you can see other great videos every Saturday morning. Hit that bell button. You'll get notifications. Thanks for watching.