Campsite review: Nearly Wild Camping - Woodland Edge This June I enjoyed my second trip to a Nearly Wild Camping site, near Sparkford in Somerset (for a brief introduction to Nearly Wild Camping please see my previous post here! ). Although I have had my NWC membership since last September, I have so far only managed to use it once, despite seeing lots of wonderful sites on there, it's sometimes difficult to find the time to fit it all in with various other events, trips, and general life! Anyway, myself and two friends were planning a trip, but as one of us lives down in Cornwall, we were trying to find somewhere relatively equidistant, and so, we decided to look in the West Country. For reasons that I have already stated in previous posts , England's West Country has so much to offer campers, and we found an array of sites that looked suitable for our trip, but one stood out above the rest - Woodland Edge. If the name alone wasn't enough, then the pictures of the bushcra...

 Campsite review: Byecross Farm Campsite Byecross Farm Campsite is a small, family run campsite, located on a picturesque farm near Preston - on - Wye, Hereford. There are many such campsites scattered across the width and breadth of the UK, but this one stands out... to me anyway! This campsite was the first that I ever visited without my family, when I was just 17 or 18 (I can't remember the exact date), and so it was the first trip where I actually had to pack all of my own gear and setup on my own. So then, looking back this trip could be described as a momentous occasion, although when I remove the rose tint from the memories, I can remember that it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows! Our party was a group of four, ranging from 17 to 24 in age, and we made the 40 mile journey divided between three vehicles - two heavily laden 125cc motorcycles, and an equally heavily laden 1960s Volkswagen Beetle. At the time, the location of the campsite as given by Google Maps wasn't q...

The Bushcraft Show 2024 I first heard about Bushcraft Magazine's 'Bushcraft Show' from the Wodesman Podcast (shout-out to Tom and Liam!) last year, and although I couldn't go in 2023 due to other plans, I found myself watching lots of YouTube videos many of the people who did go, and I made a mental note that I had to go next year. Fast forward to January 2024, and I was on their website, buying tickets, and already mentally planning the trip. I chose the weekend ticket that included camping, as I really wanted to take my hammock and camp in the woodland on site after seeing so many people doing this on YouTube. At first I wasn't sure if I'd be going on my own, as I didn't know if anyone that I'd usually camp with would fancy going to the show, but I extended the invite to my dad, and being a camping nut himself, he was only too happy to join me for three nights of woodland hammock camping (I think the show was just an added bonus for him). Eventually th...

Since I first embarked on my wild camping journey over two years ago, I have been fortunate enough to have camped in different environments and weather conditions (less fortunate for some of the weather conditions, I might add). These experiences have allowed me to learn from both my failures and my successes, and have aided me in selecting the most suitable gear to put in my rucksack depending on the season, weather, and style of trip planned, limited only by capacity and the number in my bank account. In this post I will list some pieces of gear which I have used for an extended period of time, and that I am particularly fond of. DD Superlight Jungle Hammock My first few wild camping trips took place in a two man compact backpacking tent (more on this below), until I received a spectacular present from my dad - a DD Superlight Jungle Hammock. As I'd taken to wild camping in the forest near home, this was absolutely ideal. The tent still comes out for any field/moorland camping tr...

The first wild camp of the year to me has become synonymous with winter camping. I've only been going for wild camping trips in the winter months for the last few years, but in that short space of time they have quickly become one of the trips that I most look forward to. When the temperatures are low, and the weather is dry it makes for great conditions in the forest. The warmth and light produced by a camp fire are appreciated far more greatly when the days are short and cold, which I think adds to the magic of back-to-basics wild camping. Late season camping requires both planning and the right gear, but when you employ both, it can be just as comfortable, and enjoyable as any summer camp in my opinion.  We had initially aimed to have a winter camp in December 2023, but along with reasonably mild temperatures, the final month of the year had also been plagued with wet weather - so we pushed our plans through to January and the trip subsequently became the first trip of 2024. The...

Earlier this month for my birthday I was lucky enough to receive a  membership with the  Nearly Wild Camping Club from   my partner Catherine. Nearly Wild Camping is   a growing network of locations willing to host campers who are looking for a 'wilder' camping experience, whilst still maintaining some of the benefits of a regular campsite experience - most importantly, permission to be on the land! I'd been looking at getting a membership for a while at this point, because since I'd found wild camping, it had made most regular sites seem too busy and commercialised, but I still wanted to be able to go camping with more than what can be carried on my back - so Nearly Wild Camping seemed like a perfect fit! The site has a great system where locations are rated 1-5 on how 'wild' they are, with 5 being just a location, and 1 being more or less a regular campsite with all the amenities that you'd expect.  I already had a trip planned for later in the month with ...