Surviving on Crane Park Island

As part of our Hard Times series where we work out how to live for free in London, web editor Lucy Proctor braved the wilds of Crane Park Island in Hanworth, Hounslow, to learn fire making and foraging from London's answer to Ray Mears.

As our guide Enric Cucarella from the Pyrenees lays out his array of survival gadgets and exotic fungi on the damp floor and the River Crane burbles in the background, civilisation seems far further than half a mile back through the park to Hanworth.

The bushcraft devotee learned his tricks from his boss while training as a London park warden, who picked it up on a two-week course with Mears himself. Now the 28-year-old runs corporate team building activities on the nature reserve and teaches youngsters what a knife is really for on youth days.