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Published by Scouts UK with a forward by Bear Grylls The Outdoor Adventure Manual is packed with practical Scout skill tutorials ; tents and camping, fire, food and cooking, tools and gadgets, knots and lashings, navigation, first aid and survival, and more.
Skills are explained step-by-step with photos and illustrations that really bring them to life. I’ve read a number of ‘how-to’ books that I suspected were written by people who had not actually tried out what they were describing. The Outdoor Adventure Manual leverages the know-how of many experienced authors to provide practical instruction that is inspiring and easy to follow.
The book is not an attempt at an exhaustive reference work, it’s a collection of adventurous projects, useful knowledge and activities that any Scout would enjoy. Within it’s pages a Scout can learn to build a shelter, make cordage out of natural materials, carve a wooden spoon, explore natural navigation, and sharpen their tracking skills.
Some of the information is specific to the British Isles and to Scouts U.K. (plant and animal identification for example) but that’s not to say they aren’t interesting and practical for North America. It is also a great opportunity to learn something more about the world of Scouting.
Doing the projects and trying out the skills in The Outdoor Adventure Manual would be a great way to spend a summer. It’s a colorful. engaging, hardcover book that encourages Scouts to get outdoors and get active – kind of makes me wish I was twelve year’s old again!
Click on the images to see full sized page spreads
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Outdoor Adventure Manual: Essential Scouting Skills for the Great Outdoors Available at Amazon |
Dear Clarke, many thanks for your positive review your comments are exactly what we were hoping and with sjarvis’s comments being the icing on the cake, I was one of two consultant editors involved with the project and we are very pleased with the result, both of us are uk scouters and practising bushcrafters.
Yours in Scouting
Terry Longhurst
I just got my copy of this book today, and WOW! It’s really top-notch overview of the basic outdoor skills anyone venturing outdoors needs. While it certainly has a U.K. focus (understandably), 90% of it useful just about anywhere in the world. My resident Webelos Scout just got caught reading it under the covers with a flashlight because he wanted to keep reading it after lights out. 🙂
They recruited a number of well-respected UK Scouters and bushcraft experts (e.g., Paul Kirtley of Frontier Bushcraft) to write sections of the book. I haven’t read the whole thing, but writing seems clear and concise but not boring. The graphics are clear and helpful (esp. the knots and lashings) and it’s full of full-color photos.
I’d recommend it to any Scout, Scouter, or outdoor enthusiast.
Yeah the previous edition of the Fieldbook really stunk! It showed you how to make winter mucklucs with foam and plastic. Please….
The current edition is awesome and it compliments the 12th edition of the BSA Handbook. I think that these are the BEST books BSA has ever put out.
How does this compare to the BSA’s Field Book 4th Edition?
http://www.scoutstuff.org/bsa/literature-media/handbooks/bsar-4th-edition-fieldbook.html
Don’t know how they compare because I haven’t looked at the new edition of the Fieldbook. I have older editions of the Fieldbook that are pretty interesting, but a lot of the information is very dated.