My friend Walter Lloyd, who has died aged 93, played a significant role in the revival of traditional outdoor skills in the Lake District. He was a ropemaker, a builder of shelters such as yurts, a maker of pack saddles, feltmaker, tree planter, woodland coppicer and charcoal burner.

He was born in St Ives, Cornwall. His father, William Lloyd, was a musician who also wrote about poetry and opera, while his mother, Constance (nee Rawson) was a musician who founded the Wayside Folk Museum in Zennor. His secondary schooling included a spell at the English School in Château-d’Oex, Switzerland, where the family had relatives.

His agriculture studies at Cambridge University were interrupted by wartime service in the Royal Navy. Last year Walter received a medal from Vladimir Putin in recognition of his service on the Arctic convoys. He also served off the Normandy beaches on D-day and on minesweepers in Burma and Malaya.

After graduation, and having married his cousin, Vivienne Nugent, in 1948, Walter began livestock farming in Lancashire and began the Hades Hill herd of fell ponies.

During the 1960s, Walter trained Civil Defence Corps instructors. Then as civil defence officer for Rochdale council and emergency planning officer for Greater Manchester council he planned for disasters and nuclear strikes.

In 1968, Walter founded Civil Aid. This took him to Belfast at the height of the Troubles and to Trinidad to study hurricane disaster relief. He also used music festivals as training opportunities: when several thousand people were without food, water or shelter at Windsor Free festival in 1974, he bought an old fire engine, packed it with food and tarpaulins and served long lines of hungry hippies with drinking water, chapatis and vegetable curry.

He and Vivienne divorced in 1969, and he married Gillian Baron, who he had met in 1977 on the road to Appleby horse fair.

In early retirement in the 80s, Walter pursued his interests in self-sufficiency. He set up charcoal-burning operations in South Lakeland, a significant impetus behind the revival of Lakeland crafts. He built bow-top living wagons and was proud to be associated with Gypsy people.

He was a member of the Lakeland Fiddlers and was carried to his 90th birthday party, in a woodland setting, by one of his own Hades Hill ponies.

Walter is survived by four children from his first marriage, Bill, Simon, Caroline and Tom; two stepchildren, Mike and Tom, from his marriage to Gill, from whom he was divorced; and by two “bonus” children, Joanne and Rob, from his partnership with Sue Walker, who worked at the Haybridge nature reserve in Cumbria.

He is also survived by three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.