Quote: Originally posted by ladycake on 17/6/2015
i have ordered a tent . just a cheapy matterhorn off tesco. didn`t want to spend much in case i chicken out or hate it! i`d only be doing it during summer. just need a rucksack, again a cheapy.
if i like it i`ll upgrade over time
I've just come back from a weekend of wild camping on Dartmoor. Really good time.
Most of my stuff is on the cheaper end of things. I can highly recommend rucksacks from Decathlon. Some of it is really well made and has a 10 year guarantee.
Also Sportsdirect, as grim as the shops are, do cheap Karrimor rucksacks that aren't as terrible as you'd expect given the decline of that brand. Karrimor dry bags are great value and a re handy things to have outside of camping too (making them easier to justify for significant others).
Other cheap but good stuff can be found on ebay. For instance I got a titanium gas stove that weighs an amazing 25g for under a tenner, an aluminium pot set that weighs about 225g for £6.37 (Vango sell the same set for £2, a used army bivvy bag for £15 and so on. Most camping brands are buying generic stuff from China and stamping their name on it these days and you can often buy precisely the same item for a fraction of the cost direct from China as long as you don't mind waiting a week or two for it to arrive.
I have a done a bit of wild camping. I have a Vango blade - weighs 1.5kg :) light weight sleeping bag, couples of tins of beans and I'm off. I alway pitch a good distance from any paths. Being in Yorkshire Dales there are tons of places that don't see human beings for days, never had any problems with landowners. As a past contribution said, it's mostly tolerated in the national parks. I never get scared. It's the safest thing to do. I don't feel safe going into an inner city. Good luck, and enjoy
------------- Leave Only Footprints (and paw prints!)
I draw a distinction between 'wild' camping and ordinary car-based camping - just because your pitch is not on a campsite doesn't make it 'wild', even if the tent is a couple of dozen feet from the car.
For me, wild camping implies carrying all your gear and camping in really wild (and usually high) places - there aren't many of those in Norfolk
Coincidently, my first real camping holiday (as opposed to camping with the Cadets at school) was along the north Norfolk coast back in the mid-1960s. My then-girlfriend and I borrowed a car from a mate and a tent from another mate and just set off with no idea where we'd camp. We slept under blankets on an old bed quilt. We had no stove so we drank cold drinks, ate sandwiches and salads in the day and had pub meals or fish'n'chips in the evening. Mind you, few pubs served food back then so we went to bed hungry at least twice.
We spent only one night on a 'proper' campsite, as I recall, near Cromer. The rest of the nights were in farmers' fields (with permission and without), on the seawall, in a layby, along a green lane, and even one night pitched on the village green at Salthouse right outside the Dun Cow. No-one bothered us or moved us on - things were much more laid-back in the 60s. But I never thought of that holiday as 'wild camping' - it was just camping.
Amazing family weekend with old steam engines, classic car displays, market stalls, and full catering and bar. And camping on site - Save £25 by booking in advance.
Topic: want to wild camp one day
