It’s Friday night and I’m alone, standing on a hilltop gazing down at the lights in the villages below, where not a soul can see me.
This was an escape on a whim after a busy week. I’d had enough of the emails and the social media and wanted to disconnect from modern-day stresses. So, I packed some essential camping gear and jumped in the car. A couple of hours later I was reconnecting with nature, spotlit by the stars and getting ready for a night under canvas.
Wild camping has come to mean sleeping away from the designated pitches of a formal campsite – yet it has been undertaken by humans for millennia. We began life as nomads, bedding down in makeshift homes, immersed in the natural world. Development and technology have moved us away from our natural roots, yet outdoor lovers like me still know the emotional, mental and physical benefits gained from time spent outside. Over the past 12 years I’ve become addicted to wild-camping, and done everything I can to encourage others to try it, too.
So imagine my delight when I heard about a pilot scheme that would allow wild camping in two of our national parks – the South Downs and the Lake District. Suddenly, these areas would be opened up to wild campers, removing the barrier to doing it in England and Wales – legality.
Logging on to the UK Wild Camp website – a pilot scheme to make the great outdoors more accessible, which started this week – you’re met with a compelling polemic by author Will Harris, who calls the scheme an initiative to “rewild our countryside with humans”. He states that “wild camping is illegal in the national parks of England and Wales. We want to change that.” It sounded too good to be true. And it is.
Let’s clarify: in Scotland wild camping is allowed pretty much anywhere, as long as you follow the basics of the Outdoor Access Code – mainly, arrive late and leave early, take rubbish with you, be mindful of people’s privacy and don’t light a fire if you’re not sure it’s permitted. In England and Wales, however, other than in Dartmoor national park (where an old byelaw permits it on certain sections of common land), you should ask the landowner for permission first – which in itself is often difficult. Last year I did a charity Extreme Sleep Out, and on one site alone it took two months of research to find all seven parties from whom I needed to ask permission. And therein lies the problem: even finding the landowner can be time-consuming and tricky.
And so for more than a decade I’ve taken the clandestine approach, deciding that it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission, but always leaving a place in the condition that I found it. And, in all that time, I have never once been asked to move on.
Now, while this new scheme sounds fantastic, there is a catch: to take advantage of the liberating sensation of wild camping legally will cost you £20 a night – which is more than many campsites with all the facilities they offer. On booking, you’ll be sent the grid reference showing where in the national park you are allowed to pitch, a set of rules and agreed camping dates. Which is not wild camping. All the joys – the freedom, the serendipity, the fact that it doesn’t cost a penny – are removed. The only winner in this scenario is the landowner who gets the money.
Currently, we’re in the midst of a government review of our national parks (led by Julian Glover, former Guardian commentator and speechwriter for David Cameron), so perhaps it’s no coincidence that the scheme is being trialled now. But if we truly want to “boost wildlife, support the recovery of natural habitats and connect more people with nature”, then, as Glover has said, slapping a price tag on something that is currently free is not the answer. We should be removing barriers not creating them.
You may think that I’m making a fuss over very little, that £20 is a small price to pay, but consider this: those who aren’t getting into the great outdoors now are generally from socially deprived areas and are arguably the ones who need it more than anyone.
And why aren’t they using our national parks? Because they can’t. Public transport is often non-existent or too expensive – with the Campaign to Protect Rural England showing that almost half of the country’s most socially deprived areas are more than 15 miles by road from national parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
If we are truly about getting people into the outdoors, how about the government subsidising transport links to make them more accessible? And we could look to roll out a nationwide education scheme about responsible wild camping to ensure people know how to do it safely and mindfully.
But please, let’s not say that making people pay for something they should be able to do for free is how we connect people to the outdoors. The benefits from wild camping are priceless and everyone should be able to experience the sensation of feeling on top of the world – without being charged for the privilege.
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