56 Travel
Digging for
my lunch also
fed my soul
Kate Palmer tries out a new bespoke
foraging course in rural Staffordshire
‘Y
ou’ve got yourself an
earthball,” says Jim
Parums, pointing to a
potato-shaped mush-
room peeking out from
the undergrowth. “Crack
it open.” Parums is help-
ing us to find woodland plants and mush-
rooms to turn into lunch, part of a new
bespoke foraging course. As I pick up the
mushroom its cap breaks, spewing out a
cloud of black fluff, not unlike loft insula-
tion. It’s also known as a poison puffball.
Parums reassures us we won’t be eating
any today.
It’s mid-morning in Consall Woods in
the Staffordshire Moorlands, an area of
mixed woodland in a former industrial
valley, and we’re scouring the leaf-strewn
ground for anything edible. Foraging has
been fashionable for a good few years now,
while lockdowns and staycations mean it’s
a trend that keeps growing. Parums started
foraging while working as a butler for a
family with a sprawling Scottish estate;
now he has set himself up as a guide.
From the new year he will offer courses
anywhere within a three-hour radius of his
base in Altrincham, just south of Man-
chester. Sessions range from a three-hour
workshop to an overnight stay (tents and
cooking equipment are provided). Parums
aims to introduce people to sustainable
foraging, so it doesn’t strip the land ordamage the local environment. “It’s got a
bad rep,” he admits. “I aim to teach people
how to pick only for themselves, and with
minimal impact on their surroundings.”
My boyfriend, Philip, and I meet Parums
at the Tawny, a hotel surrounded by wood-
land in the heart of rural Staffordshire.
Accommodation is in huts and treehouses
built from sustainable materials, dotted
around five miles of meandering path-
ways. We’ve already spotted a few mush-
rooms on the estate, but its manicured
lawns and lakes mean we need to go a little
further afield, on to nearby public land
where we can legally forage for food.
It has been raining heavily all morning,
but even before we meet, Parums has been
exploring the area. He reveals a wicker
basket filled with mushrooms of all shapes
and sizes, one as big as a dinner plate. “Por-
cini,” says Philip, who has childhood mem-
ories of picking mushrooms with his
grandmother in Switzerland.
Parums leads us along a remote coun-
try road. November, he points out, is the
tail end of the foraging season, but he says
we might be lucky; the wet weather is
great for toadstools. He rattles through a
safety briefing as we walk — “It’s not a
buffet, check with me before eating any-
thing” — and after just a few minutes he
says he has already seen at least ten edible
plant species.
He shows us tiny oval-shaped leaves inthe hedgerow: “Vetch. It’s a member of
the pea family.” We pick a few of the
younger leaves and they’re surprisingly
sweet and delicate. The haws we nibble
from a bush don’t taste of much, but the
homemade hawthorn wine Parums
serves us later, complete with a twig fora cocktail stick, is spicy and delicious.
First, though, we need some sustenance.
We head down a footpath into quiet wood-
land, then we hear a shout from some
walkers. “Halloo, have you found any
mushrooms?” asks a man who is with a
woman carrying a wicker basket. As weClockwise from above:
the Tawny in rural
Staffordshire; one of the
hotel’s guest rooms; the
restaurant; Kate Palmer
enjoys a woodland picnic