Trespass is a civil matter — but that is not the whole story

In England and Wales there is no general legal right to wild camp. The open-access rights granted under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 deliberately exclude camping, so pitching a tent without permission on most moorland, fell or common land is a trespass. That is a civil wrong rather than a criminal offence: a landowner or their agent can ask you to move on, and you should do so immediately, politely and without argument. But "technically tolerated" is not the same as "welcome", and how you behave on a Friday night decides whether the next walker meets a friendly farmer or a locked gate.

Scotland is genuinely different. Under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, lightweight tent camping is a statutory right across most of Scotland, with local byelaws requiring permits in a few busy areas around busy lochs. Cross the border and the rules change with the signpost, which catches out plenty of people heading north for the first time.

Where wild camping is usually tolerated in the fells

Across the Lake District, the Cheviots, the North Pennines, the Yorkshire Dales and parts of the Peak District, a quiet understanding has grown up around one-night camping high and far from anywhere. It is not a right, and it can be withdrawn, but it survives where people follow the unwritten terms:

• High, remote, unenclosed ground — above the intake wall, away from fields with livestock and away from enclosed farmland.
• One small, low-profile tent, one night only, arriving late and leaving early.
• Two or three people at most. Voices carry for miles on a still night, and a party of eight is a festival.
• No fires, no disposable barbecues, no stone rings, ever. A stove is your cooking and your warmth.
• Away from tarns, becks, summit cairns, bothies, popular pitches and any path with a name on the map.

The places you would most like to wake up — the shore of a famous tarn, the grassy shelf below a honey-pot summit, the flat pitch beside a fell road — are exactly the places where the local park authority would rather you did not. Assume the best spots are taken and walk another twenty minutes.

Dartmoor, and why the picture keeps shifting

Dartmoor long held a special place in English outdoor culture. The Dartmoor Commons Act 1985 gave a right of access on foot for open-air recreation, and for decades wild camping was treated as part of it. That assumption was tested in the courts in 2023, when both the High Court and the Court of Appeal ruled that the right of access did not include camping. Almost overnight, the most celebrated wild camping ground in southern England changed.

What replaced it is a permissive scheme: a defined set of areas where overnight camping is allowed, generally for a modest nightly fee, run alongside long-standing private sites and basic campsites. If you grew up believing Dartmoor was a free-for-all, that world has gone. Check the current scheme before you travel, and remember that the money goes towards rangers, path repairs and the toilets the moor badly needs.

Leave no trace, in the real world

Leave no trace is not a slogan — it is a list of jobs, and most of them are dull. Do them anyway.

• Carry everything out. That includes food scraps, tea bags, orange peel, wet wipes and the bit of tape you used on a blister. Nothing biodegrades usefully on a cold fell.
• Deal with human waste properly. Use a trowel, dig a hole about 30 cm deep, well over 30 m from water, paths and pitches, then replace the turf. Where the ground is thin, rocky or busy, carry it out in a sealed bag.
• Keep soap out of the water. Wash yourself and your pans well away from any tarn, beck or stream, and tip the water onto land, not into it. Biodegradable soap is still soap.
• Pitch on hard-wearing ground. Bare gravel, short grass, or an obviously used patch. Never on fragile moss, lichen, dwarf willow or eroding peat, which can take decades to recover from a single night.
• Leave the pitch invisible. No flattened grass, no cairn, no dug drainage trench, no carved initials.
• Pick up other people's litter. It costs you a carrier bag and it is the single best argument for keeping access open.

Why local restrictions keep appearing

Restrictions rarely arrive out of nowhere. They follow a familiar sequence: a honeypot spot gets a dozen tents a night through a warm summer, the peat around it turns to mud, toilet paper appears behind a rock, somebody lights a fire that scars a slab of gritstone, farm gates get left open, and residents start complaining about cars parked in passing places. The response is usually a byelaw or an order — a ban on fires and barbecues, a seasonal overnight camping restriction, a no-overnight-parking rule in a fell car park.

These measures are not aimed at the careful walker. They are aimed at the volume of people that makes careful wild camping impossible to defend. That is why it pays to check before you go: park authority websites, visitor centres, ranger teams, estate offices and the signs at the car park you are leaving. If a sign says no camping, it means no camping, however empty the fell looks.

Planning that keeps access alive

The most reliable route to a night under the stars is to ask. Farmers, estate offices and landowners often say yes to a polite request, especially if you promise one night, one small tent, no fire and no mess. Basic campsites and "nearly wild" pitches cost a fiver to a tenner and give you a tap and a loo — a bargain when you consider what you are protecting.

Plan a pitch you can reach before dark, tell someone your route, carry a paper map, and be ready to move on if you are asked. Walk out quietly, leave nothing but flattened grass that springs back, and the quiet tradition of sleeping high on the fells will still be there for the next person.