| I honestly didn’t know I was in a nature reserve behind Wagamama’s when the security team of Rushden Lakes Shopping Centre interrupted my ‘wild’ camp. It was the little fire I’d lit that gave me away. Someone having a ciggie out the back of the restaurant had alerted them to rising smoke. The irony. I didn’t even need a fire: my dinner, as usual, was a Tesco meal deal and it was a warm August evening. But nothing assuages a fear of the dark quite like it. Pat and Roger, all official in their hi-vis tabards, politely insisted I put the fire out and move on. I ended up sleeping a few hundred metres away, in a cow field, beside a dual carriageway.
That night was part of a 26-day trespass and wild camp adventure I did last summer. I walked 505 miles – over a million steps – from Hastings to Gretna on the Scottish border, raising awareness and money for Right to Roam, a campaign for greater access to nature in England. I also turned 40 this year and I can’t afford a Porsche, so this felt like good grist for the crisis mill.
The story dates back to lockdown. In beachless Worcestershire, I was shocked by the lack of places to swim in nature. Near where I stayed, there were none, so I trespassed on a local manor’s grounds to night-swim in its lake. Writing about it led to research that still floors me: 92% of England is private. That is to say, 8% is accessible without permission. Yes, that includes footpaths. For lakes, rivers and reservoirs, it’s 3%.
Meanwhile, wild camping is illegal everywhere except Dartmoor national park in Devon. Even that’s now under threat: banker Alexander Darwall has appealed to the Supreme Court to stop people camping there without permission (read: payment). As Right to Roam’s Lewis Winks told me: “It’s not just about a night under canvas; it’s about connecting with nature on its own terms.” The court’s decision was due before Christmas but still no word.
I began in Hastings because of William the Conqueror. After seizing the crown in 1066, he and his barons carved up England, evicting commoners to create deer parks. The laws made then to punish those who resisted still echo today. And the disparity of ownership is as stark: 0.05% of the population own half of England. The rest of us occupy about 6% of the land. Mad and maddening.
Authors Nick Hayes (The Book of Trespass) and Guy Shrubsole (Who Owns England) argue that the property and privacy laws that exclude us actually inform many of our modern woes: environmental collapse (England has one of the lowest biodiversity scores in the world) and the mental health crisis are just the start. To begin tackling them, they argue, we need to challenge the idea that the countryside should be reserved for a select few ‘custodians’ – and that we commoners don’t belong.
I’m a paragon of the nature-divorced townie. I don’t hike. Or camp. In fact, I bought my bivvy bag and 0%-waterproof boots on Amazon a week before I left. I did no training. At all. On my first evening’s camp, among the private redwoods of the Beech Estate near Battle, I lit my first ever campfire using the Clipper I typically reserve for fags. I didn’t know they were redwoods until I downloaded an app that told me they weren’t oaks.
My ignorance being near complete, I made it my mission to meet with and interview experts and enthusiasts along the way. People who might explain how to wild camp and trespass safely and responsibly while better connecting with that green thing over there called nature.
Most memorable among them was Emma Linford, expedition leader and Right to Roam insider. We trespassed on Rushton Hall, once home to Sir Thomas Tresham, infamous for illegal enclosures that led to the Midlands Revolt of 1607. Rushton stands out because it was the only time I was ‘caught’. A local landowner intercepted us in his spotless Disco and demanded answers. Emma took the lead. By the end of a surprisingly affable chat, he admitted he sympathised with the access cause but feared litigation if anyone got hurt on his land. “There’s no such thing as getting caught,” Emma said as we walked away. “It’s just a chance to start a conversation.”
Others I met included Paul Powlesland, a barrister and founder of Lawyers for Nature, who’s guerrilla-restoring riverbanks in East London; Maxwell Ayamba, scholar-activist reframing the countryside through Black history; Leigh Rose of Trash Free Trails, running litter-picks to mend both trails and minds; and Issy from the 15,000-strong Sheffield Outdoor Plungers, who took me trespass-swimming in a reservoir. Each showed me that access isn’t just a naughty jaunt, but about belonging and healing, the land and oneself.
One of the more laughable issues I faced was with access islands – locked-off pockets of ‘open country’ you can roam on, but with no legal way to reach, short of a parachute. To highlight this preposterousness, I trespassed in a precisely straight line between two of the country’s biggest access islands in Cumbria. Chased by nothing more than cows, I made it unscathed, save a few more blisters to decorate my now bubonic feet.
From there, I walked to Gretna over the Scottish border towards a symbolic finish: Scotland’s 2003 Land Reform Act enshrines the right to roam and wild camp for all. “Having this much freedom is powerful and life changing,” said Nadia Shaikh from Right to Roam, who greeted me at the finish. She lives on the Isle of Bute and cherishes the connection to nature it allows her.
Immediately after the walk I caught the train to Shambala Festival, back in Northamptonshire, to share my experiences with a sympathetic crowd. “This is proof that adventure needn’t have an exotic backdrop!” I preached. “So grab a mate, that tent you’re sleeping in and some picky bits from M&S – and just go!” Though as the festival’s founder, Sidharth Sharma, rightly said afterward: “Access is about so much more than recreation. It’s about mental health, identity, justice, connection and community.”
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