Media
Extraordinary Escapes with Sandi Toksvig
Filmed in the late autumn of 2020, I was invited along to act as a foraging consultant on an ‘upcoming TV program’ produced by Tuesday’s Child TV. There was no real indication of what it was about, or with whom, but when I arrived on the day, it turned out to be filming with Sandi Toksvig and her guest Prue Leith.
And excitingly - and I still maintain stupidly on their behalf - they actually asked me to go on camera…
“A fascinating career that stemmed from reading a pile of wildlife books that were due to be thrown away, led a man from Cheltenham on a journey across the globe to teach others about foraging.
Now known as the Cotswold Forager, Rob Gould, 42, takes people on foraging adventures where they learn where to find wild growing produce they can eat.”
Do children know enough about nature?
A project from late 2019 with BBC Radio Gloucestershire.
This was originally intended to be specifically about urban foraging. However, after the publishing of some quite worrying research reports, it was decided to take a different angle with it.
One particular study revealed that almost a quarter of children could not identify a conker or a robin, and questioned whether parents should be taking more responsibility to teach their children about nature?
“If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise. You might just find the Cotswold Forager leading a group of willing participants, all staring at the floor.
One of them might even be me. They’ve not gone mad though – Rob aka the Cotswold Forager will undoubtedly be showing them an interesting item to forage on the forest floor.”
Sadly, The Looking Glass is now closed as a venue, but I look forward to, hopefully, working with their head chef, Leon, again in the future.
“Too many people spend time learning the plants they want to find, even though their chances of accidentally discovering them are slim. So when I first started out, I tried to learn how to perfectly identify Ceps, and then never actually encountered one for about seven years, as they just don’t really grow in the Cotswolds.
Instead, get out and take pictures of the plants you see. Then when you get home, learn what they are. And just keep doing that. The more you learn, the easier it becomes to learn more. And then start on learning habitats, and what plants grow in what habitats. At some point, if you’re truly interested, it will just click.”