People, eh!

People, eh! Is it any surprise we can't have nice things. You know in Englands' entirety legal wild camping is restricted to one small area, Dartmoor. Why? Historic inequity and a landed class who maintain control of much of the land, in part, by cultivating the spectre of feckless townies marauding about the countryside causing untold damage to our cultural heritage. A discarded tent and a couple of bags of crap* left amongst the stands serves to make their point. Of course, the truth is there are legions of wild campers who camp all over the country regularly and responsibly without issue, and they far outnumber the dullards. That's not how it works though, and sadly you see sights likes this far too frequently, each lending ammunition to those who seek to keep us excluded from the majority of our own country. If you've kept abreast of the news you'll have seen even the meagre access we enjoy is always under threat somewhere. Recently in Devon a wealthy landowner tried to put an end to wild camping on a swathe of Dartmoor, this time he lost; or a picturesque Dorset estate acquired by an investment company, as a consequence the entire village is to be evicted, with the removal of established permissive access to much of the lands to boot. We should always be mindful not to do the work of our opponents for them.

*Credit where credit is due, they had bagged their crap, which is more than most. Still.

I spy

Sawn and chopped wood stored discretely under the trunk of a large fallen tree; I see you wild camper. Well played; not just for the forethought of your squirrelled fuel stash, but for the fact of there being no other sign of your having camped here.  You'd be amazed at how dry these under trunk spots can remain, even after the heaviest of rains; I'll often to do my Jo practice out in Burly Old, though don't always fancy carrying a staff with me, so have one similarly hidden. Another thing that amazes me is the extent to which wild camping is illegal in England, generally without permission you no rights to camp anywhere, including the New Forest; the one place I know you can is in on Dartmoor (now that a real treat too). That said, I've practised wild camping since I was in my early teens, and have camped all over, there's nothing like it; there's something cruel and draconian about denying us what should be our natural right to sleep in the arms of nature out under the stars. I've long believed if people had more opportunities to socialise with nature they'd respect her more, treat her better and be easier to mobilise at this time of climate crisis, who knows, had we not become so disconnected from the natural world maybe we wouldn't find ourselves in a crisis in the first place.

Covert ops

Whilst out walking in Brinken Wood this morning I came across something you shouldn't, clear signs of someone wild camping/having a fire.  It's something that frustrates me, folk leaving signs of their activity, it's just not the thing, it brings the rest of us on top. To their credit, not a single piece of rubbish, and the fire had been properly extinguished which suggests good practice, and maybe the visible remains were a result of a lack of bushcraft knowledge. It took me only five minutes to disperse the remains, camouflage the site and leave no trace that there had been a fire.  That's all it takes, and it makes all the difference. If people see the site of a fire they report it, the rangers or landowners check that area out more, and another wild camping opportunity is lost.  We wild camped a site on Dartmoor (on Dartmoor you can wild camp, though can't have a fire) up to 10 times a year for ten years before being rumbled by a ranger.  Even then we were only caught because we'd hung about too long in the morning.  The ranger told us that for years they'd regularly had reports of fires in the woodland beyond the river at night, although every time they went to investigate they could see or find no evidence, no trace of fire nor camp. That's how it should be.  He went on to commend us, before casually reminding us that fires were prohibited. Through good practice we'd got away with it. Even afterwards we continued to use the site, less though still regularly, and were never bothered again. The lack of bushcraft knowledge is a consequence of our culture in which increasingly folk aren't socialized to the outside and nature, nor are they encouraged to practice wild camping skills. To contrary, there are few areas where wild camping, and fewer still where wild camping with fires, is even permitted. Our countryside and wild places are all sown up, owned or controlled, with camping legislated against.  Lost to our detriment are the basic and fundamental survival skills of the ancestors.

Stag Break

I've been checking out potential wild camp sites whilst out on walks this week, and have come with some possible contenders. It's silly not to make more use of the abundance of wild camping opportunities our area affords us, and the odd night out under the stars does wonders. 

Natural shelter

Out in the forest looking for mushrooms (not to collect and eat of course, just to see how they were doing) I came across this toppled conifer. The way the tree had toppled and the way the moss had remained attached to the roots had created a natural shelter, which I think with a little adaptation would make an interesting overnight camping spot (of course, that is if camping were allowed in the forest). I reckon 2 people could be comfortably accommodated.

Head space

The wind blew threatening clouds towards us as we walked out onto Hengistbury Head this afternoon, threatening clouds who, once we were at the furthest point of our walk, carried out their threat. I sought shelter amongst the stunted wind sculpted trees of the head and found myself transported through time back to the late 1970's, when the 'Head' was one of our playgrounds. Good times (for the most part). I read more and more articles these days about young people suffering a type of 'nature deficit' through a lack of interaction with nature, and how this is to their detriment and to the detriment of our natural environment. I have to agree. 

In my early teens I began wild camping, sounds good, well it was and it wasn't. Hengistbury Head was one of those early camping sites, and the spot I found myself sheltering in today was one of our old favoured camping spots. A gully tucked away on the amongst the remnants of quarrying, long overgrown when we camped there, and even more overgrown and naturalized now, we had the opportunity to learn camp craft. The reason I see that young people don't interact with nature is they're not given the opportunity to become socialized to it, the spectre of stranger danger, new distracting technology and a lack of opportunities through development of open spaces and the imposition of restrictive regulations and laws. Yeah, lots of the things we got up to as kids weren't strictly undertaken within a legal framework, and certainly there were restrictions and dangers. Although from a legal standpoint our transgressions (riding mopeds over common land, camping, scrumping) would have only resulted in us being told to bugger off, or threats to tell our parents or at worst a clip around the ear, and that would have even been from the Police too! Now though a minor transgression too often results in criminal sanction. I've seen kids (those who get out) hassled for building camps over the common, or digging dirt jumps (both mainstays of my youth); yeah, the kids get it wrong sometimes, but hey.  We had the opportunity and space to make those mistakes and to learn through them. 

As I say, camping was both a good and bad experience, but we learnt and we developed.  We got wet, and learnt how to build better shelters. We got cold, and learnt how to build fires, and more importantly, how to respect fire. We learnt the places to camp and not to camp, to look at a landscape and understand it and how best to use it and its resources. Not only that, but we were socialized to nature osmotically and came to love and respect it. And those opportunities are missing for kids now, where's the space to learn and develop naturally...gone! I find that sad. One of my great fears (beyond the harm modern life does people and the experiences they miss out on) is that young people are not socialized to nature and to love her, and increasingly will not really care when a woodland is cut down for a car park or a common consumed by development, as they have no investment in it, no bond to it and no connection.  

Wild camping for all!