If someone were to ask you to pay for something you can already get for free, like walking in the park or gazing at a view, how would you react? Unlikely as it may seem that is exactly what the proponents of a new scheme are trying to get you to do. Here it comes, and you better get strapped in for this one. A newly established website wants you to pay for wild camping.

Wild camping is putting up your tent pretty well anywhere that isn’t a campsite. I don’t mean on someone’s lawn obviously, that would most likely get you into a confrontation with “Enraged of East Grinstead.” I mean in the hills and remoter parts of Britain.  Something many of us have been doing for years.

Ukwildcamping want you to pay £20 so you can book to go wild camping in the middle of nowhere. What do you get for your money?   Well that’s pretty vague. Suppose you pay for your wild camp and another camper shows up who hasn’t get a ticket, what exactly can you do?   By definition there is no one else there. Unless, of course, you whip out your smart phone and demand the local constabulary jump in a helicopter and arrest the criminal who has no right to be there. In England and Wales wild camping is illegal although I have never heard of anyone being arrested for it. The worst that is likely to happen to you is that you are asked to move on and that’s never happened to me although I was once chucked out of the waiting room on Windemere station when me and a mate decided to go for a quick bivi.

In Scotland wild camping is legal, so what the scheme will be doing north of the border is any one’s guess? This is an attempt to get money out of people and actually prevent the type of wild camping that has been going on for years. Whenever I wild camp I make sure I do no damage and do everything I can to make sure there is no sign that I was ever there. Even the patch of grass my ground sheet flattened, will stand up again after a few hours and I will have vanished into the mist like some ethereal presence.

The outdoor community have reacted to the proposal with the kind of fury one might expect is someone wanted to chop Ben Nevis up and sell it in chunks to the Chinese. I’ve not heard of any walkers or wild campers who think this is a good idea. Ukwildcamping are, as far as I can see, a commercial organisation, whose aim is to make money, and appear to have consulted no one.

There’s even a book to go with this scheme, which, judging by the amount of work that’s clearly gone into the cover design, has struggled to gain it’s only 2 star review. It’s written by Will Harris, who was once marketing manager for the Conservative party. Suddenly the mist begins to clear doesn’t it.

Here’s a checklist of what you would get for your £20.

Toilets                                   No

Showers                              No

Power cables                     No

Running water                  No

As far as I can see the only possible outcome of this scheme would be to get people who don’t use it prosecuted and that means criminalising the majority of wild campers. There is a very real risk that the best way to promote this scheme will be to demonise wild campers by generating a problem. In other words to highlight any problems that wild campers do cause and give them publicity in order to give this proposal some legitimacy. That is something all of us must guard against.

In the words of mountain writer Alex Roddie,

“Every wild camper in England and Wales is now an ambassador for genuine, responsible wild camping. That is the most powerful response most of us can make.”

The Great Outdoors magazine has more on this read their feature here

I’ll happily give this company the right to reply to my blog, let’s see if they get back to me.

If you enjoyed this blog you might like to take a look at one of my books.  Bothy Tales

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