 |
Wild Camping in the UK
Q. Is there anywhere that my son and I can roam and pitch a tent freely in the open air, or does the law prohibit this?
Yours
Andrew Pettey, Wolverhampton
Click here to add an answer this question.
A. See Wild Camping (left)
Click here to add an answer this question.
A. The legal situation is different in Scotland than it is in England and Wales.
In England and Wales, there is no legal right to camp wild and, strictly speaking, permission should be sought. This is, however, impractical.
However, in high mountain areas, and in most other hill land, wild camping is generally accepted above the intake walls, providing it is for a limited time and its fairly discreet - out of sight of houses/farms.
There's always a slim chance that you'd be asked to move on, though its never happened to me.
In the Peak District, wild camping is discouraged in some areas and banned completely if the moors are very dry.
The best areas in England and Wales are probably the Lake District and Snowdonia - and you're likely to meet several other wild campers - and very little chance of any hassle.
In Scotland, the current access legislation - just come into effect (early 2005) - is explicit about people's right to camp wild on hill land - usually more than 100 metres away from a public road - although you'd want to be much further away than that!
Check out the Mar Estate near Braemar - they actually seem to encourage wild camping.
Mike Knipe, Crook
Click here to add an answer this question.
A. The exception to the rule in England is Dartmoor.
The right to wild camping is actually enshrined in the National Parks & Access to the Countryside Act, 1949 amendment Dartmoor Commons Act, 1985.
Article 6 states:
6 Camping
(1) No person shall knowingly use any vehicle, including a caravan or any structure other than a tent for the purpose of camping on the access land or land set out for the use or parking of vehicles except on any area which may be set apart and indicated by notice as a place where such camping is permitted.
(2) No person shall knowingly erect a tent on the access land for the purpose of camping:
(a) in any area listed in Schedule 2 to these byelaws;
(b) within 100 metres of any public road or in any enclosure.
(3) No person shall camp in a tent on the same site on the access land for more than two consecutive nights, except on any area which may be set apart and indicated by notice as a place where such camping is permitted.
Basically put, you can camp anywhere as long as you are compliant with the above.
James
Click here to add an answer this question.
NB. Wild Camping and The Law in England, Scotland and Wales.
Tents cannot be pitched just anywhere because every piece of Britain is owned by some individual or some organisation and according to the strict letter of the law permission must be obtained prior to pitching tent and camping.
In practice however, this is often impractical and wild camping is usually tolerated in the more remote areas - typically, more than half a day's walk from an official campsite or other accommodation providing you:
- Keep groups small
- Camp as unobtrusively as possible
- Leave camp as you found it
- Remove all litter (even other people's)
- Carry out everything you carried in
- Carry out tampons and sanitary towels (burying them doesn't work as animals dig them up again)
- Choose a dry pitch rather than digging drainage ditches around a tent or moving boulders
- Toilet duties should be performed 30m (100ft) from water and the results buried using a trowel
- At all time, help preserve the environment
- And if you are in any doubt about what you're doing, find out more
In Scotland, the current access legislation (which came into effect in early 2005) is explicit about your right to wild camp on hill land.
There appears to be an exception to this with respect to camping in Dartmoor National Park where the right to wild camping is actually enshrined in the National Parks & Access to the Countryside Act, 1949 amendment Dartmoor Commons Act, 1985 - see Wild Camping in the UK for more details.
For the definitive answer with respect to wild camping in Scotland see the answer supplied by the Scottish Natural Heritage
NB. go4awalk.com cannot offer any advice on suitable locations for wild camping.
Hope this helps
Mike (Editor)
Click here to add an answer this question.
To ask a new question please use this Ask a Question Form.
To search this section, see Search.
To contribute to go4awalk.com or to contact us about anything at all
- see Talk To Us. For help see Help.
go4awalk.com and go4awalk.co.uk are registered trademarks of TMDH Limited.
Copyright | Terms & Conditions | Privacy Statement
NB. To see our navigational hills you must have the Macromedia Shockwave/Flash Player plug-in installed in your browser. This is free and comes as standard with later versions. If you have an early version browser - click here and follow Macromedia's installation instructions. Furthermore, go4awalk.com makes full use of your browser's ability to display multiple pages in a single window as Tabs. To enable tabs in Internet Explorer see Tools > Internet Options > General. To enable tabs in Mozilla Firefox see Tools > Options > Tabs. To enable tabs in Safari see Safari > Preferences > Tabs.
