Special interest guide
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Foraging holidays
“Hej!” comes the friendly greeting as Helena Hjort welcomes you into her camp kitchen on an uninhabited island in Sweden’s Saint Anna Archipelago. After co-founding our partner, Do the North, Helena spent several years working the line in a New Orleans restaurant before returning to Sweden and blending her passion for cooking with travel. “Although this is quite a laidback holiday,” she laughs. “You’re only kayaking for maybe two or three hours a day. Really, it’s all about relaxing, having fun, taking your time, and indulging yourselves.”
Once you’ve spread out your sleeping gear in your tents, you’ll gather around the long trestle table and get to work preparing dishes for the days ahead. Tonight, it’s catch of the day bought from a local fisherman, pike-perch that will soon be sizzling and crackling in a heat-blackened skillet over the open fire. “Everything is done on the fire,” says Helena. “It’s a style of cooking where you’ve got to use all your senses, and really go with instinct and adapt, which is how everyone should cook at all times. It teaches you that observant mindset.”
While the fish is frying in a yellow pool of herby butter, foraged wild greens are wilted in a second pan. From a Dutch oven, meanwhile, comes the bubble and sweet sugary tang of an apple pie that will be served with freshly picked cloudberries and custard. Tomorrow, your kayaking guide will lead you out exploring in the archipelago for more foraged herbs and greens, according to Helena’s menu. But there’s no rush.
Our foraging holidays like this kayaking trip are not survival courses, but a way to creatively use what you find in nature. Everything is built around a protein: fish perhaps, or lamb from another island. Dishes are seasonal, very Swedish, and often have a historical component. Breakfast one day might be salted pork pancakes with lingonberries, a simple meal that miners and forestry workers would have started their day with in pre-industrial times.
Trips are led by local people who not only know the different types of mushroom you’ll find in a patch of forest, or what berries are likely to be perfectly ripe for picking at the time of year you’re passing. They also know where to find them and, most importantly, how to put them to good use in a meal.
Once you’ve spread out your sleeping gear in your tents, you’ll gather around the long trestle table and get to work preparing dishes for the days ahead. Tonight, it’s catch of the day bought from a local fisherman, pike-perch that will soon be sizzling and crackling in a heat-blackened skillet over the open fire. “Everything is done on the fire,” says Helena. “It’s a style of cooking where you’ve got to use all your senses, and really go with instinct and adapt, which is how everyone should cook at all times. It teaches you that observant mindset.”
While the fish is frying in a yellow pool of herby butter, foraged wild greens are wilted in a second pan. From a Dutch oven, meanwhile, comes the bubble and sweet sugary tang of an apple pie that will be served with freshly picked cloudberries and custard. Tomorrow, your kayaking guide will lead you out exploring in the archipelago for more foraged herbs and greens, according to Helena’s menu. But there’s no rush.
Our foraging holidays like this kayaking trip are not survival courses, but a way to creatively use what you find in nature. Everything is built around a protein: fish perhaps, or lamb from another island. Dishes are seasonal, very Swedish, and often have a historical component. Breakfast one day might be salted pork pancakes with lingonberries, a simple meal that miners and forestry workers would have started their day with in pre-industrial times.
Trips are led by local people who not only know the different types of mushroom you’ll find in a patch of forest, or what berries are likely to be perfectly ripe for picking at the time of year you’re passing. They also know where to find them and, most importantly, how to put them to good use in a meal.
Kayaking, foraging, & gourmet cooking
The remote Saint Anna Archipelago off Sweden’s west coast is composed of thousands of islands and tiny islets, almost all of them uninhabited, that break up the sea swell so that kayaking is easy and relaxed. Even so, on a trip that is all about exploring the flavours of the archipelago, the distances are kept short – all the more time to forage ingredients or visit local suppliers of fish or meat.
Here, Sweden’s fiercely guarded Right to Roam, or allemensratten, really comes into its own. You can drag your kayaks out of the water and pitch your tents wherever you like, the only ‘rule’ being a principle that will be close to the heart of any responsible traveller: don’t disturb and don’t destroy.
On our kayaking and foraging trips, you’ll stay on one island (“sheltered, and with beautiful sunset views,” advises Helena), and head out on daytime excursions looking for ingredients to use in that evening’s meal. Herbs like sorrel, juniper, orpine and chives flourish in open meadows grazed by animals; berries can be plucked from low-hanging branches and mushrooms group around tree trunks in the woods. This seasonal smorgasbord adds texture and flavour to everything from flatbread wraps stuffed with wild boar or moose, to slow-roasted lamb. “It’s a very communal experience in the way we forage, cook, sit down and eat together,” says Helena. “You definitely come back with a taste for the finer things in life.”
Here, Sweden’s fiercely guarded Right to Roam, or allemensratten, really comes into its own. You can drag your kayaks out of the water and pitch your tents wherever you like, the only ‘rule’ being a principle that will be close to the heart of any responsible traveller: don’t disturb and don’t destroy.
On our kayaking and foraging trips, you’ll stay on one island (“sheltered, and with beautiful sunset views,” advises Helena), and head out on daytime excursions looking for ingredients to use in that evening’s meal. Herbs like sorrel, juniper, orpine and chives flourish in open meadows grazed by animals; berries can be plucked from low-hanging branches and mushrooms group around tree trunks in the woods. This seasonal smorgasbord adds texture and flavour to everything from flatbread wraps stuffed with wild boar or moose, to slow-roasted lamb. “It’s a very communal experience in the way we forage, cook, sit down and eat together,” says Helena. “You definitely come back with a taste for the finer things in life.”
Forest foraging
Sweden is a forager’s delight – not only in the Saint Anna Archipelago, where you can wild camp freely and the water is so flat as to make it navigable for even novice sea kayakers, but also in the taiga forest of Skinnskatteberg. Here, Marcus Eldh and his guides at our partner WildSweden lead groups into the wilderness, seeking moose and beaver, and teaching you how to howl along with the wolves at night.
Early mornings on our wildlife watching tours in Bergslagen Forest are often spent poring over the undergrowth for mushrooms to chop into omelettes, or for fresh lingonberries and cloudberries. Ever had the meatballs at IKEA? They’re served with lingonberry jam, but the berries taste a thousand times better when they’ve been picked off the branch still wet with dew in a Swedish forest.
“I see the year as divided into lots of short seasons, not just four.” Marcus, a passionate advocate for Swedish nature, thinks for a moment, then quickly reels off a list: “There is apple season, cloudberry season, blueberry season, lingonberry season, chanterelle mushroom season… funnel chanterelle season! To be honest, when I was young, foraging for food didn’t interest me all that much. But now I’m older I find myself not wanting to go abroad because I don’t want to miss out!”
Early mornings on our wildlife watching tours in Bergslagen Forest are often spent poring over the undergrowth for mushrooms to chop into omelettes, or for fresh lingonberries and cloudberries. Ever had the meatballs at IKEA? They’re served with lingonberry jam, but the berries taste a thousand times better when they’ve been picked off the branch still wet with dew in a Swedish forest.
“I see the year as divided into lots of short seasons, not just four.” Marcus, a passionate advocate for Swedish nature, thinks for a moment, then quickly reels off a list: “There is apple season, cloudberry season, blueberry season, lingonberry season, chanterelle mushroom season… funnel chanterelle season! To be honest, when I was young, foraging for food didn’t interest me all that much. But now I’m older I find myself not wanting to go abroad because I don’t want to miss out!”
Umbria cooking holiday, Italy
Italian cooking in a farmhouse between Umbria and Tuscany
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€1980 to €2140
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ex flights
Kayaking in Sweden, foraging and food
Culinary Adventure in the Swedish Wilderness
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€1415
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Nutritional food holiday in the Peloponnese
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£1745
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Cyprus food and foraging winter holiday
Enjoying traditional Cypriot hospitality this winter
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€900
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Foraging and feasting holiday in Swedish Lapland
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Where can you go on a foraging holiday?
Foraging in Sweden’s remaining old-growth forests demonstrates to the authorities that these places have a value beyond the economic.![]()
Sweden
“Foraging is a natural part of walking in Swedish forest outside of winter,” says Marcus. “On our September tours we look for a variety of mushrooms every day. Then, if we’re cooking a vegetable stew or curry over an open fire, we can chop them in. Or if we find a particularly tasty variety, we might fry them up alone with butter and garlic.”
More than half of Sweden is covered in forest, but these are mostly tree plantations owned by logging concerns, rather than old-growth forests, which have been cut down in swathes. Vulnerable to disease because they are typically monoculture, the tree plantations are also nowhere near as effective at fostering biodiversity. Foraging in Sweden’s remaining old-growth forests must be done with care to avoid damaging the trees and plants, but the fact that so many people continue to forage within them hopefully demonstrates to authorities that they have better uses than being chopped down to make flatpack furniture.
Sweden boasts a blockbusting berry bounty, including blackberries, lingonberries and Arctic cloudberries that, as the name suggests, are found mostly in the north. Bilberries are European blueberries, prized for their antioxidant properties, while elderberries, which are often used for juice or wine, are considered good for the immune system.
The Sámi, the Indigenous people of northern Scandinavia and Russia, have always had foraging at the heart of their diet, but the practise is now enjoying a surge of popularity. In 2004, a group of renowned chefs launched the New Nordic Food Movement, a 10-point manifesto to emphasise purity, freshness, simplicity and ethics. Among the elements they championed were meals that reflect the changes in the seasons and basing cuisine on Nordic climates, landscapes and waters. That person standing next to you on holiday cutting a spray of herbs could be a professional chef.
More than half of Sweden is covered in forest, but these are mostly tree plantations owned by logging concerns, rather than old-growth forests, which have been cut down in swathes. Vulnerable to disease because they are typically monoculture, the tree plantations are also nowhere near as effective at fostering biodiversity. Foraging in Sweden’s remaining old-growth forests must be done with care to avoid damaging the trees and plants, but the fact that so many people continue to forage within them hopefully demonstrates to authorities that they have better uses than being chopped down to make flatpack furniture.
Sweden boasts a blockbusting berry bounty, including blackberries, lingonberries and Arctic cloudberries that, as the name suggests, are found mostly in the north. Bilberries are European blueberries, prized for their antioxidant properties, while elderberries, which are often used for juice or wine, are considered good for the immune system.
The Sámi, the Indigenous people of northern Scandinavia and Russia, have always had foraging at the heart of their diet, but the practise is now enjoying a surge of popularity. In 2004, a group of renowned chefs launched the New Nordic Food Movement, a 10-point manifesto to emphasise purity, freshness, simplicity and ethics. Among the elements they championed were meals that reflect the changes in the seasons and basing cuisine on Nordic climates, landscapes and waters. That person standing next to you on holiday cutting a spray of herbs could be a professional chef.
Italy
Penny buns, parasols, shaggy ink caps, wood hedgehogs, golden chanterelles, chicken of the woods, horn of plenty – edible mushrooms have some wonderfully evocative names. There are roughly 10,000 known species of fungi growing in the wild – but scientists suspect there are millions. Only around 2,000 of those identified so far are known to be edible and to taste nice. And some can be dangerous, even fatal, if you eat them, so it’s vital to know what you’re picking.
Truffles are essentially underground mushrooms, with some species an expensive delicacy, often used in haute cuisine. They need to be dug up, so in Sweden the law of allemansratten doesn’t apply – you need the permission of the landowner to forage for them.
However, you can try it for yourself in Italy, as part of a cooking holiday in Umbria. Heading out first thing in the morning with local truffle hunters, perhaps using specially trained dogs, you’ll focus your attention on beech, fir and oak trees – truffles often attach themselves to their roots.
Truffles are essentially underground mushrooms, with some species an expensive delicacy, often used in haute cuisine. They need to be dug up, so in Sweden the law of allemansratten doesn’t apply – you need the permission of the landowner to forage for them.
However, you can try it for yourself in Italy, as part of a cooking holiday in Umbria. Heading out first thing in the morning with local truffle hunters, perhaps using specially trained dogs, you’ll focus your attention on beech, fir and oak trees – truffles often attach themselves to their roots.
Greece
There are hundreds of wild greens growing across the Greek mainland and the islands. On our cooking holidays in Greece, you might forage for anything from spinach to beetroot, learning how to use them for pies or even teas. And at night, you might hear wild pigs and jackals doing their own form of foraging, usually around people’s bins.
Olives grow everywhere in Greece, but of course many people have trees on their own land. Visit between October and January for harvest season, when whole communities come together to share the workload and the spoils. You spread a blanket beneath the tree and rake the branches so that the olives fall to the ground. It’s hard, hot work and can leave your hands scratched – not as idyllic as it might seem – but so worth it to enjoy a bowl of freshly picked olives drizzled with oil or to learn how to press them and make your own oil back home.
Olives grow everywhere in Greece, but of course many people have trees on their own land. Visit between October and January for harvest season, when whole communities come together to share the workload and the spoils. You spread a blanket beneath the tree and rake the branches so that the olives fall to the ground. It’s hard, hot work and can leave your hands scratched – not as idyllic as it might seem – but so worth it to enjoy a bowl of freshly picked olives drizzled with oil or to learn how to press them and make your own oil back home.
Guided foraging gives you a deeper experience on your holiday than most other visitors enjoy, as it brings you up close with the natural world in the place you’re visiting. It also provides an income for guides with a fantastic wealth of knowledge they’ve built up over years – and which they are happy to share with their guests.
In Sweden, one of the most popular berries to pick is the wild strawberry, or smultron. When a local forager has a preferred patch of them, that’s their smultronstalle – their ‘sweet spot’. But they won’t reveal these places to just anyone. “As far as my family’s favourite locations, I might share them with my travellers,” says Marcus. “But I wouldn’t necessarily show my neighbours…”
In Sweden, one of the most popular berries to pick is the wild strawberry, or smultron. When a local forager has a preferred patch of them, that’s their smultronstalle – their ‘sweet spot’. But they won’t reveal these places to just anyone. “As far as my family’s favourite locations, I might share them with my travellers,” says Marcus. “But I wouldn’t necessarily show my neighbours…”
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