Before You Strike a Match

Lighting a fire among trees is a privilege, not a right. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland you need the landowner's permission to light any fire on private land, and in Scotland the Outdoor Access Code allows a small cooking fire only where it causes no damage or disturbance. Many nature reserves, Sites of Special Scientific Interest and Forestry England woodlands ban fires outright, and during dry spells a total fire ban may be in force across whole counties. Check the wildfire risk before you pack your pan, and if the ground crackles underfoot or the bracken is tinder-dry, leave the matches at home.

Assume also that someone will see your smoke. A fire lit responsibly, tended carefully and put out properly is a quiet pleasure. A fire left smoking in a pine plantation in August is a disaster waiting to happen. Ask first, keep it small, and be prepared to walk away without lighting anything at all.

Choosing and Preparing the Spot

Look for ground that is already bare: an established fire scar, a forestry turning circle, gravel, sand or compacted mineral soil. Avoid peat entirely; it can smoulder underground for days and surface miles away as a wildfire. Avoid tree roots and buried stumps, which will hold heat long after you have gone.

• Clear a circle of at least two metres across, right down to bare earth. Scrape away leaf litter, pine needles, bracken and moss; a litter fire spreads faster than you can stamp.
• Look up. Overhanging branches, especially dead ones, catch sparks. Choose a gap in the canopy at least three metres above your fire.
• Keep well clear of standing deadwood, gorse, heather and dense conifer regeneration.
• Do not ring your fire with stones from a river or beach. Flint, shale and some sandstones hold moisture and can shatter violently when heated.
• Bring a shovel or trowel, at least four litres of water, a fire blanket or metal tray to sit the fire on, and thick gloves.

Position yourself so the wind carries smoke away from your pitch and shelter, not into it.

Tinder, Kindling and Fuel from the Wood

Good fires are built before they are lit. Gather three grades of material and lay them out in reach, so you never have to leave a flame unattended to hunt for twigs.

• Tinder takes a spark: shredded birch bark, dry grass, reedmace down, clematis fluff, and the fine resinous crumbs from a pine stump.
• Kindling is pencil-thin to finger-thick dead twigs, snapped from standing dead branches rather than pulled from the damp leaf litter. Hazel, ash and birch are excellent.
• Fuel is thumb-to-wrist thickness. Ash, oak, beech, hawthorn and blackthorn burn long and hot. Avoid rotten wood, which smoulders and smokes, and never cut living timber.

Take only fallen deadwood, and leave the big rotting logs where they lie; they are food and shelter for stag beetles, fungi and countless invertebrates. A woodland stripped of deadwood is a woodland in trouble.

Lighting and Feeding the Fire

Build small. A fire the size of a football will cook a meal and keep you warm; anything larger is showing off and dangerous. Lay a loose bundle of tinder, lean kindling over it in a tipi or a flattened criss-cross, and light it from the upwind side with a single match or a spark from a ferro rod.

Blow gently at the base, not the flames, until the kindling catches. Add twigs a handful at a time, then larger pieces as the fire establishes. Resist the urge to heap on fuel; a smothered fire smokes, and smoke is wasted heat and a nuisance to wildlife and neighbours. Never use petrol, meths or firelighters soaked in chemicals, and never leave the fire alone, not even for a minute.

Cooking Over Embers

The best campfire cookery happens over glowing embers, not leaping flames, which blacken everything and burn the outside before the middle is warm. Let the fire die down for twenty minutes, then rake the coals into a flat bed. Bannock dough wrapped round a green hazel stick, potatoes buried in the embers, a trout in wet newspaper, sausages on a forked willow stick: all simple, all superb. Keep a glove and a long-handled tool handy, and never move a hot billy can with bare hands.

Leaving It Cold and Clean

When you have finished, drown the fire with water, stir the ashes with a stick, and drown it again. Repeat until you can hold your hand flat above the ash and feel nothing, then touch it with care. Embers can hold heat for hours beneath a grey crust.

Scatter the cold ash thinly, replace your turf or leaf litter if you lifted any, and take every scrap of foil, packaging and half-burnt remnants home. The only sign that you were there should be a footprint or two and a memory worth keeping.