Happy New Year, all you walkers, you hikers, active step-based exercisers.
We have a new set of challenges for each month of 2025! The first of these for January will be dropped in about a week!
But here is the general description.
I’ve recently been reading Huw Richard’s self-sufficiency gardening book from 2024, and it has a section dealing with foraging month by month. Sustainable foraging is increasingly becoming popular, and I know some of us get pretty excited to get out there blackberry picking in autumn. Huw Richard’s chapter has a chosen edible to be foraged per month, allowing foraging to become something that happens not just at a particular time of the year but can become a habit combined with any walks in the countryside.
It’s almost as if it is begging for an A10 challenge to come along, make it come alive, and use it to get us all out there and walking! Seeking out those foraging edibles might just get you out enough to keep regularly getting those Active10s in!
The chapter in question is: FORAGED FOODS, in: Huw Richards, Sam Cooper, The Self-Sufficiency Garden. Feed your family and save money. 2024. Dorling Kindersley. P195
So for this set of challenges, I will post one suggested foragable edible per month, describing one common edible easily spotted on walks at that time of the year.
And then it’s up to us to use some walks to collect some of the suggested edibles at least once per month, ideally more than once, exploring different sites and different culinary uses.
However, as Huw says in his book, please “ensure that you can identify potentially harmful lookalikes”. If you are unsure, don’t pick it. Also, make sure that you forage sustainably. This challenge is meant to allow walking to lead to exploring some foragable nature, but not to replace whole meals.
To identify plants, I use a hand-sized mini Collins Gem guide book, which I do tend to bring along when going for foraging walks. It’s based on the classic of Richard Mabey, Food for Free. Collins Gem. 2004 .
Facebook UK foraging groups also provide communities where the collective knowledge can help identify plants when one is unsure. From these groups, it’s clear that many in the UK are already combining walks with seeking out nutritional snacks from the wild.
As Huw Richard’s says in his book:
“Collecting edible, wide ingredients is a superb way to supplement meals and add extra nutrients for free. Make sure you forage on public, not private, land and never harvest too much or you may destroy the delicate balance of a fragile ecosystem.”
🥾🌱🥾🌱🥾🌱🥾🌱🥾🌱🥾🌱🥾
So happy walking and seeking out those nature bounties! And don’t forget to take a picture and report back here!
For any walks, we can obviously also use our own Active10 app, or use any Steps app, or none at all. Steps are steps.
I have added the link to our key app below, but there are many more that can be used:
Active10 on iOS apps.apple.com/gb/app/nhs-a...
Active10 on Android play.google.com/store/apps/...
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★ LINKS (to monthly challenge will be added here):
(Monthly challenge will be posted around the end of the first week of every month)
1. Jan - healthunlocked.com/active10...
2. Feb
3. March
★ SOURCES:
FORAGED FOODS, in: Huw Richards, Sam Cooper, The Self-Sufficiency Garden. Feed your family and save money. 2024. Dorling Kindersley. P195
Richard Mabey, Food for Free. Collins Gem 2004.
