Special activities mark Dee Valley Wellness Week

* Fire on the mountain – outdoor skills expert Jamie Corry with Sally Lloyd-Davies, of South Denbighshire Community Partnership.

A chance to channel your inner Bear Grylls with activities like breadmaking over an open fire is part of a Wellbeing Week designed to help people in the Dee Valley chill out after the trials and tribulations of the pandemic.

The free six-day event features everything from bushcraft to knitting with sessions to boost mental wellbeing as well as countryside skills, cookery and crafts and is being staged in Corwen and Llangollen from Monday, February 28.

The packed programme has been put together by South Denbighshire Community Partnership (SDCP) and will be based at venues in Corwen and Llangollen.

Alongside Knit and Knatter, pampering and cooking demonstrations there will be Nature for Health activities, Emotional Resilience coaching, exercise sessions and bread-making, which takes place at the Pengwern Centre in Llangollen.

But this is breadmaking with a difference and comes courtesy of outdoors expert Jamie Corry, who runs the Wild Bushcraft Company, a glamping and outdoor activities centre at The Forge, near Corwen, in the shadow of Moel Fodig, a 3,500-year-old hillfort.

He said: “It’s not like regular breadmaking – this is bannock bread, unleavened dough twisted around a stick and cooked over an open fire.

“The air in the bread when you knead it makes it expand when it’s cooked – it’s delicious and very easy but first you have to make your fire with sparks from a flint and the bark from silver birch which is full of volatile oils and soon catches light.”

The breadmaking will be at the Pengwern Centre in Llangollen Centre and Scot Jamie Corry is also in charge of the sessions on countryside skills and axe-throwing but there are also less physical activities on offer.

SDCP Community Health and Wellbeing Officer Jess Horner said: “We have put this varied programme together to provide opportunities to try new things all of which aim to improve wellbeing.

“We want to trial a number of activities and get feedback on how successful and worthwhile they are with a view to offering them in future.

“Many people have found life very difficult in the pandemic and this is an opportunity for the community to come together as part of our National Lottery community fund funded ‘ Your place or Ours‘ and Betsi Cadwaladar Health Board funded ‘ICAN’ projects to help improve people’s wellbeing”

The wellbeing week has secured match funding from Denbighshire Voluntary Services Council (DVSC) as part of their ‘Winter of wellbeing’  initiative and on the first day of the wellbeing week SDCP will be hosting a drop-in financial wellbeing event at Canolfan Ni Corwen in partnership with Denbighshire Voluntary Services Council, Citizens Advice Denbighshire and many other organisations.

* To access the full timetable of wellbeing week activities please visit  https://www.facebook.com/sdcpartnership and to book directly you can visit SDCP’s Eventbrite page http://sdcp.eventbrite.com/ or contact SDCP on 01490 266044.