* 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.