Woodlore Instructors

Woodlore Field Staff Biographies

Paul Kirtley

Paul is Woodlore's Course Director, responsible for planning and overseeing the running of our courses and managing the team of Field Staff who work on the courses. While this is a full time job, requiring time in the Woodlore office, Paul first and foremost enjoys being out on our courses. He can be found leading Campcraft, Woodsense, Fundamental Bushcraft, and Journeyman courses as well as assisting Lars Fält on our Arctic Experience.

Paul was born in Yorkshire then spent his childhood in Snowdonia and the North Pennines, much of it outdoors either in the woods or on the hills, before studying at Edinburgh University. During his time in Scotland, Paul grew to love the mountain environment of the Highlands, walking and wild camping there whenever he could.

After moving south of the border again Paul came to Woodlore as a student, attending a Fundamental Bushcraft course in 1999. Following a further five courses with Woodlore, Ray asked Paul to join the outdoor team in 2003. Since then Paul has not looked back and left a successful career in the City to join the Woodlore team full-time. Paul says:

throughout my life, the one constant has been my love of the great outdoors, whether it was playing in the woods as a child, mountain biking, hiking, wild camping, skiing, shooting, photography or wildlife watching. Working for Woodlore allows me to indulge my love of the outdoors by simply getting out there, spending time in some wonderful places and working with other people who love the same environment, whether they are colleagues or the people who attend our courses.

Willow Lohr

Willow was born on a farm beside a canal in the Netherlands. At the age of 17 she moved to Scotland and continued her rural living in the Highlands working variably as a shepherd, gardener, beekeeper, grousebeater and crafts woman. Her main interests are traditional crafts and living skills, particularly tanning, plants and herbal medicine, firemaking, primitive husbandry and making utensils from natural materials. Willow lives with her three children on a croft in Scotland.

Willow has a deep curiosity about knowledge in general, which led her to pursue and attain an honours degree in philosophy in 1995. In 2002-2003 Willow's thirst for knowledge brought her to Woodlore to further her skills by attending the Fundamental Bushcraft course, the Journeyman course and the Birchbark Workshop.

In 2004 Willow started to work for Woodlore as an Assistant on the Fundamental and Journeyman courses, courses she has now progressed on to leading. Teaching the Fundamental bushcraft skills and taking students deeper into the subject on the Journeyman course has been her main focus since joining Woodlore and is a subject which she is deeply passionate about.

Nature is both generous and unforgiving. As modern people we have forgotten the skills of how to walk a path between the two. It is my pleasure to help you reclaim the skills to navigate.

James Bath

James was born and raised on the south west coast of Cumbria. As a boy, his playground consisted of the beach, shoreline and woods near to his parents' home. With age he was let loose on the local moors and then the Lakeland mountains behind. Always eager to be doing something outdoors, through his childhood James was a keen shooter, fisherman and walker. Even now James just enjoys being outside doing anything, any time of the year, particularly enjoying the "proper weather" of the Lake District - force ten gales and horizontal rain.

Throughout schooling James was always looking out of the window a little too much, many years later culminating in watching a pigeon on the windowsill for twenty minutes during his university finals. Despite gaining his degree in Countryside Management, this perhaps more than anything made him realise there really was no way to ignore the outdoors, and so now as a full-time member of the Woodlore staff believes he has found the perfect job. James joined the Woodlore team in 2006.

When James isn’t working on our courses he can be found in the shed, tinkering with equipment as our quartermaster.

Phil Pemberton

Phil joined the Woodlore team in 2006, having been a student on a number of our courses in previous years. As far back as he can remember, Phil has always had a passion for the outdoors. Even as a child, he spent all his free time outdoors. When asked to describe himself, he summed it up with the word chthonic, meaning "of the earth", or "of the soil".

When we looked up chthonic in the dictionary we discovered it can also mean "of or relating to the underworld". We are thankful that the only place Phil really is a demon is in the kitchen. His campfire cookery has to be tasted to be believed. Phil's outdoor skills extend into many other areas too. His main interests are trees and plants, and he grows most of his family's food organically on a large allotment. He also hunts wild game and stalks deer as often as possible. Phil's enthusiasm for Bushcraft is contagious and he loves working on our courses.

It is a real privilege working for Woodlore, and watching students start their own Bushcraft journeys.

Rob Bashford

Rob joined the Woodlore team in 2006.

A keen outdoorsman and qualified RYA sailing instructor, Rob enjoys hillwalking, camping, shooting and, of course, sailing.

Rob grew up in the Kent countryside and spent his formative years in the Scouts and Cadets, including participating in orienteering and shooting competitions.

When he's not working for Woodlore Rob tends to like to travel, either to work or for pleasure, his most recent trip being to New Zealand. About working for Woodlore Rob says:

I enjoy being outdoors in all weathers, learning lost skills, working with a diverse range of people and passing these skills onto them.

Sarah Day

Joining the Woodlore team in 2006, Sarah arrived at her interest in Bushcraft after a childhood spent camping with family, cooking dough twists and kippers over open fires and scouring the beaches for fossils. At the age of eight she was bought Ray Mears Survival Handbook. In the years since, she has tried many of the different Bushcraft skills including cordage using a variety of natural fibres, basketry, dyeing using vegetable dyes, pottery, flint knapping, bone working, bow making (and archery) and, of course, shelter and fire.

Many of Sarah's skills (fibre work, basketry and pottery in particular) were also acquired as a result of her continued involvement in reenactments of Tudor life at a local manor house in which she has been taking part since the age of seven. Sarah's love of creative work led her to starting a degree in fashion and textiles in September 2007.

Sarah also enjoys sailing, hiking, hill walking, and has been involved with the Scouts as an assistant leader. Sarah is working her way through solo and tandem canoeing certificates, a relatively new interest sparked by two months working at a canoe camp in Canada in the summer of 2005.

Dan Hume

Dan joined the Woodlore team in 2007 having completed a two-year National Diploma in Sports Studies (Outdoor Activities) Course. While he was studying, Dan undertook work experience with Woodlore as well as attending Fundamental Bushcraft and Woodsense (tracking) courses as a student. Dan has been interested in nature, wilderness bushcraft, and outdoor activities for as long as he can remember. His parents recall Dan trying to light fire by friction using an off cut of a 3"x3" post when he was around 5 or 6 years of age! Apart from learning about many of the aspects of Bushcraft, Dan's leisure interests include canoeing, archery, hill walking, shooting, tracking and flint knapping.

Dan has been a member of the The Air Training Corps since 2002, which has taken him as far afield as the Cape York Peninsular, Australia. In 2007 Dan furthered his knowledge of tracking, spending time with the San Bushmen on Woodlore's African Bushcraft and Tracking course in Namibia. This was, Dan says:

an experience I will never forget, unlike the close encounter Ray and I had with a lion, which I wish I could!

Yella Martin

Yella, who is Austrian by nationality, grew up in West Berlin. She lived in New York State for a year in 1996, during which time she learnt how to spin, knit and make felt. She moved to London to study Biochemistry in 1999 and completed her PhD in Cell Biology in 2006. Yella likes to be out in the fresh air and travelling off the beaten track, her favourite being ski touring. Yella came to Woodlore because she wanted to spend more time outdoors rather than being cooped up in a laboratory all the time and has completed the Heroes of Telemark, Primitive Technology, Woodsense, Arctic Experience, Fundamental Bushcraft, Campcraft, and Journeyman courses.

Yella started working for Woodlore in 2005 and, despite the summer we had in 2007 says she still enjoys "Working outdoors, no matter what the weather is."

Jeremy Ray

Jeremy was born in England and spent his childhood living in a small village in the hills of North Yorkshire. From a very early age Jeremy was out in the woods and moors watching insects and animals, fishing and exploring in all his free time. This deep interest in nature has stayed with him all through his life. While still at school Jeremy moved with family to Sweden, a country of endless opportunity for outdoorsmen. With hunting, fishing, canoeing and so on just out the back door in the vast forests and countless lakes that cover this country Jeremy enjoys the outdoor life to the full. Jeremy says

Working with Woodlore, a company staffed and run by people who find deep satisfaction in the outdoors and wilderness, offering courses for people with a similar mindset is an ideal situation for me!

Steve Suggett

Born in Tanzania but raised in Durham, Steve has since had the opportunity to return to Africa to visit a number of countries including The Sudan and Botswana. Learning Bushcraft has taken him to Canada, Arctic Sweden and Norway on a number of trips. Steve has also worked in Australia selling firearms to professional shooters and while there spent time in the bush, rain-forest, mountains and canyons. As a keen diver and photographer, Steve enjoys outdoor life from many angles. He continues to develop his outdoor living skills in all environments for bush travel, particularly enjoying making journeys on foot and increasingly by open canoe.

A long-time student of Woodlore's, Steve kept coming back for more until he ran out of courses to do and then joined the team in 2006.