Finally, good news! Wild camping wins in the UK as US public lands dodge sell-off

How did we get here? Up until 2023, Dartmoor was the only place in England where people were allowed to ‘wild camp,’ or backpack, as we’d say in the US. Unlike national parks in the United States, English and Welsh national parks are not owned by the government. There are whole towns inside their boundaries that predate the very concept of national parks, so there’s a lot of private property within their borders.

While there are lots of places in England where the public is allowed to hike through private land (compared to the US, anyway), camping is a different story. It’s generally considered trespassing unless you get permission from the property owner. But in Dartmoor, backpacking essentially had squatters’ rights as a sport. It had been done there for so long that it was accepted as normal, if not legal.

In 2013, however, a large chunk of Dartmoor land changed hands. A hedge fund manager named Alexander Darwall bought 4,000 acres in the southern part of the park. He and his wife, Diana, tried to remove campers from their property in 2023, and brought the matter to court.