Men's group fundraises for woodland 'forever home'

The group meets weekly so that men can get together and talk

A men's mental health group created to help members connect, talk, and support each other in the open air has set up a fundraising appeal to buy an area of woodland as a permanent base.

Jonathan Toney, from Stratford, set up the Wild Wood Connection Project to encourage men to talk, reflect or "simply walk side by side in silence".

He told the BBC how he suffered his own mental health issues after the age of 40 and realised that men still did not talk about their feelings.

"Just underneath the surface, every single person [in the group] is falling apart," he said. "There's something going on. There's divorce, there's debt, there's children – they've lost children – or whatever it is."

Describing how important it was to communicate, he said: "I just found it so inspirational, the people I met. They brought so much to my life and I actually learned how to communicate."

He said the group, which meets every Monday, was currently based at Welcombe Hills, supported by Stratford-on-Avon District Council and Warwickshire Wildlife Trust, which allowed the group to use the land for free.

There were, though, limits to what they could do in the public space, he said, so they now sought a woodland "forever home" and headquarters.

Owning their own land would allow members to run activities including fire-making, building bushcraft structures, and "other therapeutic skills that foster resilience, confidence, and connection", Mr Toney said.