: Books - Instincts Survival.

Byline: William Leece

I DO not plan to be on my own in the Amazonian rain forest in the foreseeable future. Nor - unless someone knows something I don't - does my engagement diary include a spell fending for myself in the high Arctic or the Sahara Desert.

But, if I were to find myself alone in one of these fascinating but inhospitable places, I hope something of Ray Mears' guide to survival might have sunk in.

Ray Mears' tips for getting by without the 21st century have been on the television in the past few weeks, and here they are both encapsulated and expanded in book form.

It's a fascinating book to read in the comfort of the big city. Travel from cover to cover and you will be the ultimate armchair survival expert, able to cope with a solo trip across just about any part of the world with a minimum of equipment.

Should you find yourself lost, rudderless and thirsty in one of the more arid parts of the planet, then Mears, who runs his own school of wilderness bushcraft and survival, is your man.

Read the landscape and the life, he advises. Water can often be found at the base of cliffs, in narrow canyons and by tight bends in dry river beds. Converging animal tracks can indicate the path to a water hole but don't follow beasts like eland and giraffe, as they don't need water holes - whereas wildebeest, impala and waterbuck do.

If things get really, really desperate, you could always shoot a large herbivore like an elephant and drink the liquid from the stomach: survival can be ruthless business, and not one for the faint-hearted.

The old joke about starting a camp fire in the wilderness involves rubbing two boy scouts together, but it's better to trust Ray Mears instead. When all is said and done, the easiest thing to do it to use a match or lighter - but do remember to keep them well and truly dry. Otherwise it's down to artificial flint sparking sticks which can be bought from just about any serious outdoor store, or the classic caveman's technique of rubbing two sticks together that triggered the boy scout crack. Only that Ray Mears shows you how to do it properly.

Shelter, makeshift boats, looking after your feet - Mears has been there, done that. But, fascinating as it is, what is it all for? Even the energetic hikers among us are hardly like to find themselves in the position where even a tenth of the outdoor skills outlined here are put into action A glossy coffee-table book like this is hardly the thing you would carry out into the wilderness, to thumb through carefully trying to find if such and such a fungus equates to a square meal or an agonising, hallucinatory death.

Yet the fascination is total. And, if even a fraction of it sticks in the memory, and comes to your rescue when things have gone wrong and you're stranded in the wilderness of the Carnedds when you'd rather be down in the pub in the valley, then it will have served its purpose not 10 but a thousand times over.

l Bushcraft, by Ray Mears. Hardback, 232pp (Hodder and Stoughton, pounds 18.99).

CAPTION(S):

HOT SHELTER: Left open at the sides for ventilation, this shelter made from whale nones on Namibia's skeleton coast provides shade and some insulation