Hi Neil,

Thank you so much for your email. I have to say I am extremely envious of all that you are doing – it sounds like heaven!

I also agree with much of what you say – I definitely wouldn’t wild camp in someone’s garden, nor on the sort of fields down low near buildings that clearly belong to someone, and when camping there would be clearly visible. That would feel weird and invasive to me. I would never roam randomly across land while someone was busy farming in it – that would feel like imposing on them.

I suppose the complication comes with this sentence:

I do think (maybe wrongly?) that its different if the land is owned by an organisation such as the National Trust, and I wouldn’t hesitate to wild camp discretely on NT land or alongside the coast path.

I also would happily camp on those lands.

So where do we draw the line?

• My back garden near London?
• Your much-loved 25 acres?
• That chap in Dartmoor who has 4000 acres and is trying to ban wild camping?
• Land owned by the National Trust?

Also, when you’re out on an adventure, how do you know if the land is NT and therefore ‘fair game’ for camping?

I also feel a complication in this sentence:

i’ve been bikepacking, kayaking, wild camping etc for 10+ years.

which clashes with this:

Why should anyone else have any right to come on to my land? Or anyone else’s land for that matter?  We don’t have the ‘right to roam’ around in other people’s gardens, so what makes anyone think they have the right to roam on any other privately owned land?!

The third complication I think is the sort of people who roam the land.

I totally despair at people who wreck the landscape. Litter, knocking down fences, barbecues. I can totally empathise with any landowner who hates the idea of a right to roam when considering those clowns!

But there’s also the sorts of folk who are pushing the right to roam agenda (and people like me), who love everything that you are doing, would support those sorts of things politically and morally, and we’d all probably have a great evening in the pub sharing all our common interests. It seems wrong to me that these kind of people are not allowed to sleep on wild hilltops, swim in open rivers etc etc.

I know that the land is ‘owned’ and I accept that. (I ‘own’ this computer I am typing on, I worked hard to pay for it, and it would annoy me if you came and trampled over my keyboard.)

So I’m all in with capitalism and owning stuff!

BUT, at the same time, in my guts I just don’t know how people can ‘own’ nature… or at least ‘own’ it to the exclusion of everyone else.

You own the hill. Do you own the grass on it? The trees? The birds flying overhead? The rabbit warren under the ground? The rock beneath the warren? The mantle in the core of the earth beneath your land? I’m being a bit daft here, but trying to explain the contradictions I feel between legally owning something (fine) versus excluding anyone from a slice of the natural planet.

Thanks so much for opening up this conversation. I do believe in the right to roam, but more than that I believe in the mission that we all need to fix nature. And it will be more effective if all of us who love nature, on both sides of the fence, can work together more than we shout at each other!

I’d very much love to see your fantatsic piece of land one day.

Have a great week,

Al

Thanks for taking the time to respond Alastair and sorry for the slow reply.

I should have said I wrote my first email on my phone on a plane, so if it came across as a bit of an enedited rant I apologise! This one may not be a lot better, I’m still just on my phone!!

I think I should also clarify that the key message I was trying to get across is that my personal viewpoint has only changed since owning a patch of land myself, jumping to the other side of the fence!

Prior to owning it I’d have taken a very similar stance to yours and, I’d imagine, most of your audience.

The hill was there long before me and will be around long after me. It will, I hope, remain almost unchanged for many decades and hopefully well beyond. The top is a scheduled listed monument, with 2 burial cairns, 1 of which has been repurposed in world war 1 to form a shelter and there are various iron and bronze age remains, including the site of a former roundhouse.

Having saved up and purchased it, I believe that I own it, or am custodian of it, from a ‘human’ perspective. If I had saved up and bought a flash car instead it would be mine, and only a criminal would use it without my consent.

Lots of people have nicer ‘stuff’ than me (bikes/ computers/ cars/ houses etc), and quite correctly I don’t have any right to borrow those things from them without their consent. I chose to spend my money on some land instead of stuff, so why would anyone think it’s ok to borrow that without my consent? It’s the only thing that anyone other than a criminal thinks they can ‘borrow’ without asking. Lots of other relatively well off westerners could have foregone other luxuries (cars, houses, computers, children even!) and bought their own patch of ground that they could have owned (from a ‘human’ perspective anyway).

So just to clarify I don’t think I own any of the ‘nature’ as such. I cannot and wouldn’t want to control what nature is coming and going. I wouldn’t try to discourage a fox from digging a hole, however I wouldn’t want a human coming along with a spade and digging a hole. Does that make sense?!

I am delighted when I see wildlife there, however I have quite the opposite emotion if I spot people up there. I’m sure you are pleased if you see birds in your garden, but you wouldn’t want Mr Smith from number 57 climbing over your fence and trampling in your flower bed!!

I think the Dartmoor wild camping appeal has brought the right to roam to the surface, and since my first email I see that wild camping is once again allowed on Dartmoor. I guess the difference here is that Dartmoor has traditionally always allowed wild camping and this landowner has tried to change an established right to camp.

If you think our conversation is still relevant I am happy for you to publish an edited version on your website. I do think that based on my own experience the views will be split almost precisely by people who own or don’t own any land, but I see no harm in opening up conversation about it! I’d be grateful to see a copy of the opening article before you put it out there.

And please do look me up when you are in the South West!

All the best

Neil

Hi Neil,

Thanks very much for your email.

I agree with most of what you say. In fact I think the nub of the issue is ‘what feels like my garden’ vs ‘what feels like open land’…. and I guess that it is impossible to make an exact distinction on those things.

I certainly wouldn’t want Mr Smith from Number 57 wandering in my garden.

I wouldn’t mind if Mr Smith from Number 57 wandered over my massive estate far away from me / my garden / my picnic / whatever.

But there’s definitely a size of land where I would become annoyed by him – I guess that’s the size of land you are referring to here.