CANTERBURY is a fine historic cathedral city with many comfortable hotels. Unfortunately, I am not sleeping in one. Instead, I'm in the woods a few miles away, lying in the dark under a pile of dead leaves as a gale roars through the treetops.

Talk about being close to nature. I hear a rustling sound so close that it sounds like some determined woodland creature is trying to set up home in my ear canal. And, no matter how hard I try to banish it, The Blair Witch Project haunts my thoughts with every cracking branch.

I'm inside a shelter improvised from a waterproof army poncho, tree branches and vegetation. From the outside, it resembles a compost heap, but, if lost in the wild, this structure will keep you alive for weeks. “I've spent years living in these,” says the survival expert Steve Price. “Snug as a bug in a rug.”

East Kent has yet to be designated one of the planet's last untamed wildernesses, and the dual carriageways are a reminder that civilisation is never too far away. But should civilisation collapse - a scenario that seems less far-fetched with each passing week - cockroaches, Keith Richards and Steve Price would still roam the earth.

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Surprisingly genial for a laser-eyed former special forces hardcase, Price knows more about survival and hunting than most. I'm here in the woods with him to spend 24 hours as a survivalist. My mission is to learn how to cope if catastrophe struck and we had just half an hour to pack a rucksack, grab an airgun and head for the hills. That unhappy eventuality is the premise of the new BBC TV drama series Survivors, a remake of the cult Seventies show about a Britain devastated by man-made plague.

Canterbury, a couple of hours' walk away, has many decent restaurants. But I didn't eat in any of them. Nevertheless my evening meal, a stew, was prepared from 100 per cent local produce - the sustainable organic ingredients were sourced a few hundred metres away with £1,000-worth of fearsomely accurate air rifle called a Logun S16 Evo equipped with a telescopic sight the size of the Hubble.

I didn't bag the meat myself, though. I lay perfectly still behind a camouflage net for more than an hour, with wood ants invading my trousers, while I waited for something fluffy and edible to hop obligingly into the crosshairs before nightfall. Nothing did, which was almost a relief - I haven't shot a living creature since the age of 13 when I assassinated a sparrow with an airgun and was racked with guilt for a month.

This living-off-the-land caper isn't easy as it looks, even tooled up with a shooter straight out of The Day of the Jackal. Luckily, Price, a former sniper instructor, is rather more adept at hunting and gathering. Producing a freshly shot bunny from his backpack, he instructs me to skin and gut the dead animal with my penknife. Previously, the corkscrew was the only one of my Swiss Army Knife's gadgets to have seen any serious action. But there is a first time for everything, so I unfold the blade, take a deep breath and get stuck in.

Dismembered and disembowelled, the unfortunate beast is boiled to near-oblivion with some added vegetables. By vegetables I mean stinging nettles, rosehips and chestnuts flavoured with wild thyme. The result is a grey, milky gruel that looks like dishwater and, to be honest, doesn't taste too sensational either. But it is just about palatable and, more important, contains all the protein, minerals and vitamins I need to survive. In fact, if you know what to look for, Britain's woods and hedgerows are almost as well-stocked as the aisles in your local supermarket.

“There's an abundance of food,” Price says. “You could end up putting on weight out here.” Medicines, too. Price explains how a plantain leaf makes an excellent antiseptic poultice.

Price's survival mantra is: “Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.” And he is full of tips that sound bizarre, but could save your life - collecting dew for drinking water by walking through grass with towels tied to your ankles, for instance, or surviving a freezing night by cuddling a container of boiled urine like a hot water bottle.

It rains during the night, but my DIY woodland home holds up well, keeping me dry and warm without recourse to recycled bodily fluids. In the morning Price suggests a lesson in unarmed combat. Here's a little survival tip from me: If an ex-military martial arts instructor ever asks you to point a knife at him ... don't.

NEED TO KNOW

Steve Price's survival DVDs, including Easy Camping and Survival and Easy Airgun

Hunting, plus bottles of rabbit-attractor scent, are available from his website: www.shootmore.co.uk

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