Big supermarkets in foreign countries always give me goose pimples - I'm always slightly beside myself in Cash & Carry. However, there's a primal thrill in the acquisition of food that car parks, neon lights and queues for the checkout can't completely extinguish, so I was really quite excited about going foraging.

Andy Sartain supplies a number of Michelin-starred establishments with scavenged meats, fruits and leaves - the surprise hits of the menu de degustation. I met him at the Gordano service station near Bristol and climbed into his very small van, a Jack Russell doglet going mental on my lap.

When I explained that I only had five hours he was clearly disappointed - 'but there's just so much to see at the moment'. Andy trained as a chef and has degrees in agriculture and forestry. Our conversation was constantly interrupted as he pointed to things by the side of road. 'There's wild horseradish. You need goggles to deal with that! You grate it and mix it with - ooh, there's burdock. Makes great crisps! Bit early for that, though.'

When Andy spotted some meadowsweet we screeched to a halt and jumped out to grab handfuls. It's like elderflower but more complex, floral and almondy and very good for ice cream.

We parked in a forest a few minutes' drive from Gordano, but we might as well have arrived by spaceship. It was another green world. Andy pulled out a basket for mushrooms. A man can't hold a basket without looking camp, but soon Andy had found a half-eaten cep. 'This will be delicious!' he said, brushing off some maggots and taking a long sniff. I found the poisonous mushrooms more fascinating than the edible ones. There were a few early stinkhorns. They smell like cheese for monsters but you can eat them when they are young. We pulled one apart and it was a bit like a lychee inside.

Then we came across a clearing with a well-organised camp-fire. There were rough-and-ready benches and a milk churn turned into a boiler. It struck me that this was easily the best-looking restaurant I'd seen for ages. And you could smoke there, too. All it needed was a couple of celebrities and it would have been perfect. We left a black toadstool called a King Alfred's cake in the fireplace - they're good natural firelighters.

We were having fun but we still weren't doing that well, just a few odd mushrooms and our half cep. 'I picked a kilo of chanterelles in 10 minutes on Monday,' said Andy, hopefully, but then out of the blue, we struck gold.

We walked into a sunny clearing and found ourselves surrounded by fairy rings, oceans of bovine Boletus, slippery Jacks past counting and plate-sized horse mushrooms. Writing songs, making art, or even doing science is just foraging really. You snoop around and you don't always know what you're looking for and sometimes nothing happens and sometimes it's great beyond measure. We filled the basket in 10 minutes, then we were on our way to the coast, where there was purslane, wild celery, sea blight and orache, many sorrels and samphires.

I really didn't need to buy a farm, all the best stuff is growing wild. It was so much nicer than going to the supermarket and it's free, it's primal, and off the organic/green scale altogether. It was utterly wild and wonderful. Fresh and weird. Man hunt food, man feel good.