RUMBLINGS…

What goes around comes around. This editorial, from the May 2000 issue of TGO, illustrates the fact that we’ve been through this wild camp problem before… with the same amount of interest from the government that we seem to be getting this time around.

The campaign begun by Darren Christie in 2008 echoes the fears Cameron McNeish raised in 2000 - that wild camping wasn’t going to get official recognition.

It’s going to take a heck of a lot more signatures at Darren’s on-line petition to get the Prime Minister or any of his government to take a blind bit of notice of what we’re calling for – the harmless legitimisation of leave-no-trace wild camping.

If you haven’t signed yet, what are you waiting for? If you have, tell your pals!

On a lighter note – it must be spring. Steph and I spotted our first curlew on the moors on March 2. I’d actually heard one fly over the cottage a few nights before, but assumed the odd noise in the dark was just another of those earthquakes we get round here from time-to-time!

Sorry to bear the bearer of bad tidings, but it seems the government doesn’t intend to do anything about the growing call to legitimise wild camping in England and Wales.

You already know about ““Weird” Darren Christie’s online petition encouraging the government to give backpackers in E&W the same right to responsible wild camping that our counterparts in Scotland already enjoy.

Though Darren’s petition doesn’t reach its “use-by date” until May, the government has already poured cold water on the campaign. Which rather brings into question the validity of e-petitions on the Prime Minister’s own website.

As the campaign got underway just a few weeks ago, I wrote to my local MP, Tory David Curry, asking him to raise the matter with the government.

This he did, and very quickly.

Sadly, this morning, I received a letter from him with which he enclosed the response he’d had from Secretary of State for the Environment, Hilary Benn.

I’ll cut the crap and reproduce the meat of what the Rt Hon Mr Benn MP had to say.

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The debate over whether or not to legitimise wild camping is catching fire.

Various forums are debating the issue including this one,  here, which I visited tonight and was sufficiently roused to compose a lengthy response.

The post hasn’t appeared yet, presumably awaiting vetting or the site’s administrator to authorise my posts as a new member, so I’ll post it here to give it an earlier airing. Please read it in conjunction with the original thread here.

Well, I just had to register in order to respond to some of the comments here which leave me feeling pretty cold.

I’m being overwhelmed by the “I’m alright Jack” attitude (“if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”) of most posters who seem to prefer the idea of sticking their heads in the sand and ignoring the fact that, according to the law, you’ve no legitimate right to be woken in the morning by the song of skylark or the call of curlew.

If the law is to be adhered to, as it stands, you’d all be tucked up in your own beds at night waiting to be woken by the grumbling sound of traffic every morning. Will you be happy simply to dream of wild places?

Most of the arguments being wielded here in favour of maintaining the status quo are the very same arguments that landowners used to lobby against the increased RIGHTS of access that the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2001 gave us.

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This is Darren Christie – and he might just have started a big ball rolling.

Blogger “Weird” Darren has set up an e-petition at the government’s website calling for the legitimisation of wild camping in England and Wales.

Full marks, and thanks, to Darren for seizing this issue by the throat, and to all those bloggers and websites that have moved to urge their readers to support the petition.

It’s a curious and incomprehensible wrong that while we can camp in Scotland’s wild places without fear of prosecution, we can’t do the same in England and Wales.

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