Staffordshire, Cannock Chase Autumn Foraging Courses

Cannock Chase is a large area of natural deciduous woodland, coniferous plantations and lowland heath, creating a diverse environments for many wild mushrooms to flourish during the autumn months. At 26 square miles it is the smallest Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in mainland Britain, established as such in 1958 for its beautiful landscape, history and wildlife. It supports around 800 wild deer and a number of endangered birds as well as slow worms, grass snakes, adders and the common lizard.

Being on the outskirts of Rugeley and Cannock, this former Royal Forest is easy to reach from Stafford, Wolverhampton, Lichfield, Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham, Telford and even Burton-on-Trent.

We’ll be meeting at the car park, the course starts there with a short introduction on what to look for, our foraging code and a brief of the Countryside Act, where it relates to foraging.

Then we’ll set off on a roughly 2.5 hour walk around the area, teaching you how to identify the different edible and poisonous plants, flowers, fruits and mushrooms that we find. There will be breaks along the way for some lovely homemade refreshments such as our wild mushroom soup or elderflower champagne.

We will finish the day off with a light wild food lunch based on what we have found. All of our food is seasonal so what we make depends on recent weather and what is around at that time of year. In autumn this will usually include some tasty treats made from our recent finds, a wild salad that we will pick on the day and creamy wild mushroom pasta.

After the course, we will email you the details of the plants and mushrooms we find to help you to remember what you have learnt.

Beaudesert Old Park Car Park
Rugeley Road
Rugeley
WS15 1QW

At the Beaudesert Old Park car park, which is roughly halfway between Cannock Chase Camping & Caravan Club and Beaudesert Golf Club. See ticket bookings page for full details of meeting point.