🔥 Winter Journey: Fire, Crafting & Getting Outside Anyway

It’s February in Edinburgh, it’s cold, it gets dark early, and staying inside, cozy under a blanket feels like the only way through it.

But... what if we went outside anyway?

This winter, Nature School for Grownups is spending four Saturday afternoons learning about fire — how to find useful materials, how to build one, how to actually get your fire to light, and what to do with it once it does.

Once we’ve got our fires going, we’ll gather around them, craft together, play some games and enjoy being outside in the middle of winter.

Because grownups deserve recess even when it’s cold. 🔥

What we'll be doing

Over four sessions, we’ll build our fire skills bit by bit.

We’ll explore different woods and natural fire-lighting materials, learn what makes something useful (or completely useless!) for getting a fire started, practice different ways of building and lighting fires, and get more confident tending them safely.

There will be plenty of actually doing rather than standing around watching me demonstrate things.

You’ll work together in small groups to gather and assess materials, build your fire home, get your fire going and keep it alive.

And I fully expect some fires to refuse to cooperate.

That’s part of it.

Figuring out why a fire isn’t working — Is our material too wet? Is there enough air? Did we skip ahead too quickly? — is one of the best ways to learn what a fire actually needs.

Once we’ve got some warmth and light going, we’ll slow things down and craft around the fire together.

Exactly what we make will change across the Journey, but the idea is simple: learn something practical, make something with your hands and spend a couple of winter hours outside with other humans.

And don't forget the games!

🔥 Across the four sessions we'll explore:

• finding and assessing natural fire-lighting materials
• getting to know different woods and how they behave
• building a good fire home
• different ways of lighting a fire
• keeping a fire going once you’ve managed to light it!
• fire safety and responsible fire-making
• troubleshooting fires that aren't cooperating
• simple crafts we can make together around the fire

You absolutely do not need any previous fire-making or bushcraft experience.

If your current fire-lighting technique is approximately “put a match near some sticks and hope for the best,” you are very welcome.

Curiosity is plenty.

🕯️ Why winter?

I spend a lot more time indoors during winter.

Every year the days get shorter, the weather gets colder and suddenly going outside requires a lot more convincing than it did a few months earlier.

Fire gives us a pretty good reason.

There’s something very satisfying about making your own little pocket of light and warmth on a cold afternoon — especially when you made the fire yourself.

So rather than waiting for spring before Nature School properly comes alive again, I thought we could spend some of the darker months learning how to make a bit of light ourselves.

Get outside. Get cold.

Make fire.

Warm up. 🔥

🌿 The Winter Journey

We'll meet every other Saturday, giving us four afternoons together:

Saturday 6 February
Saturday 20 February
Saturday 6 March
Saturday 20 March

🕑 2–4 PM
📍 Bridgend Farmhouse, Edinburgh

Each session will build on the last, so I recommend coming along for the whole Journey if you can.

🔥 Winter Journey Pass — £56

Includes all four sessions. NOTE* if you are purchasing the winter journey pass, select one date only and purchase the pass for that date. It will apply to all 4 sessions. 

🎟 Single Session — £15

🚨⚠️ IMPORTANT: Live locally? I have a few discounted £7 individual session spots available for folks living in Craigmillar (EH16/EH18) areas! If you'd like to claim one, just email me at natureschoolforgrownups@gmail.com with proof of your postcode, and I'll send you a discount code. First come, first served!🚨⚠️

Come along for one session if you’d prefer to try it out first.

Who is this for?

Anyone who thinks:

I would quite like to know how to make a fire without relying entirely on a lighter and blind optimism.

Or maybe you already spend loads of time outside but have never properly learned firecraft.

Maybe you want an excuse to leave the house in February.

Maybe the idea of sitting around a fire making things with a group of people just sounds really nice.

All of those are good reasons.

You don't need to be outdoorsy. You don't need to own loads of kit. And you don't need to know anything about fire before you arrive.

Come cold. We'll work on the warm part together. 🔥