Much ado about wild camping | Pinnacle Newsletter #58
#58 Much ado about wild camping
I seem to have spent a lot of time this week thinking, reading and writing about a subject that spread like wildfire on social media: UKWildCamp. (If you don’t yet know the backstory, get up to speed with the links in this week’s reading list.)
My original plan for this week’s letter was to write about how the fast-moving, high-volume nature of this controversy had the effect of overloading my ability to cope with social media, making me recoil from my own personal account – I announced a Twitter break the other day – and making work-related social media that bit more painful than usual. But I also wanted to write about how glad I was to be able to play a part, however small, in the UKWildCamp scheme being suspended so swiftly. I wanted to write about the weird cognitive dissonance in both appreciating social media and finding it all too much at times.
The outdoor community’s response to a perceived threat – the concept of being charged to wild camp – was to unite and swiftly crush it. Many factors contributed to the speed with which the UKWildCamp pilot folded, but I couldn’t help but be surprised by the immediate and powerful force of the backlash. Such power can occasionally reveal itself to fight harder and more important battles, but it’s perhaps more usual that environmental and access issues fail to drum up much traction or support online. The UKWildCamp incident was not a perfect fit for either category, although it had elements of each.
So what prompted such massive and immediate support for this particular cause? Was it because UKWildCamp represented an attack on a decades-old tradition? This was a factor, but I think the big one was simply this: the government tried to make money out of something we enjoy that is currently free, informal and unregulated. Those images of Will Harris talking about wild camping to a room full of suit-wearing Tories](https://twitter.com/ukwildcamp_org/status/1134476063055187971) looked really bad, too.
Think about it, though. I reckon it would be hard to come up with a more efficient way to provoke a backlash from the outdoor community. It seemed almost perfectly tailored to generate a massive and immediate response, and that troubles me.
There are many unanswered questions about UKWildCamp, and a number of theories as to what the scheme’s true motivations were. Some believe it was just an elaborate publicity stunt. The most likely possibility is the simplest: that this was a misguided attempt for a well-connected small organisation to make a few quid while also trying (in a clumsy way) to promote wild camping and maybe even campaign to change the law, as Will Harris has claimed, albeit from a position of ignorance. But – and maybe I’m reading too much into this – what if UKWildCamp was designed to fail? What if this was a cynical covert attempt by the government to study the outdoor community and try to understand something alien to them before they can extract maximum financial value out of it? Much can be learned, after all, by examining how the outdoor community has reacted.
Let me be clear: there is no evidence for this hunch (it’s too vague to be called a theory). The evidence points towards something far less nefarious, far less deliberate, far more inept. But this incident has made me uneasy, and I’m convinced that it’s far from over. I doubt that this will be the last time big money comes for wild camping.
In other news…
Outdoor writer and editor David Lintern has launched a new email newsletter, ‘Backcountry Diary’. The first instalment was an incredibly thought-provoking read, and I’m looking forward to reading future newsletters. You can subscribe here.
Mark Horrell’s new book, Feet and Wheels to Chimborazo,, which I edited, is now available to pre-order and 50 per cent off for a limited time. This is a great tale about a cycling and mountaineering journey in South America (plus adventures elsewhere, including cycle touring in the Scottish Highlands).
Sidetracked Vol.15 also came up for pre-order this week. The tagline of this issue is ‘the beautiful hardship of adventure’, but I think that actually sells this issue short – there are some tremendously important environmental stories in here, for example highlighting the South African water crisis. Sidetracked continues to tread that line between stories of pure stoke and ones with a more significant message.
I was glad to see a feature by Richard Hartfield on his amazing trans-Caucasus hike in the new issue of Outdoor Enthusiast magazine. It’s free to read online here.
Recently published
What I’ve been reading this week – this week’s quality online reads on the environment and outdoors.
Three lessons I learned by going offline for a month on the Cape Wrath Trail – in which I set down my thoughts on my strange and wondrous month away from the internet.
Government-funded ‘UKWildCamp’ pilot scheme to charge for wild camping successfully foiled by outdoor community – my news piece about last weekend’s big story.
The End of Winter – my feature about hiking the Cape Wrath Trail this February, first published in the May issue of TGO, is now free to read online.
Until next time,
Alex
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