They Found Me Wild Camping And Drove At My Tent
With me still inside.
I should have known there would be trouble, but I had nowhere else to go.
It was the lighthouse car park with a stand of trees beside it, the only cover I could see for miles of fields and salt marsh around. There wasn’t much choice but to camp there for the night if I wanted to avoid being seen.
I was used to wild camping, having been walking the coast of Great Britain for the past 6 months. Wild camping is illegal in England and Wales, but I was always discreet and respectful, and nobody had to know I was ever there. Having crossed into Lincolnshire that afternoon, it looked like it was going to be quite difficult to stay hidden.
Walking atop the endless sea wall that stopped the county from disappearing into the sea, I could see for miles in every direction. To the left, the flat plains of uninterrupted farmland, and to the right, the salt marsh and sea.
There was nowhere to hide a tent. Having grown up in the countryside, I know farmers don’t appreciate trespassers, they can get pretty angry about it, and farmers can be on their land day and night.
So when I saw the lighthouse car park and the stand of trees beside it, I was relieved. As I crossed the car park I noticed there was a lot of litter and there were rubber skid marks in rings around the tarmac, someone doing donuts in their car.
This didn’t make me feel great about camping there but I had no other option and pitched my tent in the trees as it got dark. As I settled in for the night, I heard the boy racers bwaum pop pop down the road and screech into the car park.
Oh god, I thought, here we go.
They parked up near to me, revving and shouting. I thought they’d have a field day if they saw me in my tent and I just lay there silently in the dark, hoping they wouldn’t see me.
Sometimes their lights would flash over my tent and, whether they saw me or not, obscured among the branches, they kept to themselves. After a little while I relaxed a little and looked at my phone, and after a couple of hours at exactly 9:30 pm, they got back in their cars and sped off.
It seemed a very specific time to leave, but I didn’t think about it any further. I finally relaxed, and I buried myself in my sleeping bag thinking the day was over.
It wasn’t.
I heard a Land Rover roar down the road and into the car park. Its lights arced across the tent, throwing shadows of branches across the canvas until it came so close the headlights were unobscured. It parked a couple of metres away and switched off the engine.
Busted.
I hadn’t been caught wild camping illegally before. I was about to get the bollocking of a lifetime. I could tell the person was angry by the way they were driving, high revs, jerky, sudden motion. My heart was beating out of my chest into my throat.
It was like they already knew I was there and had homed straight in on me. I felt naked in the full beam, even behind the canvas. I didn’t know if they’d be able to see the shape of me sitting up or not. I was literally caught with my pants down and I felt so small and vulnerable. I waited for them to get out and march over to loudly and aggressively ruin my day, but nothing happened. Two minutes passed.
Two. Minutes. Passed.
It was agonising.
They started flashing their lights. Then they started opening and slamming their doors. They must have thought I was sleeping and were trying to wake me. They wanted me to pop my head out of the tent.
It was starting to drag on and I thought, I have to confront this situation now and do something. I gathered my courage to unzip the tent and peered out.
All I could see was two headlights in the black, no more than 3 metres away. Lying there in my sleeping bag with no more than the fragile tent sheet for protection, I felt completely exposed and helpless. I had no idea who was behind the lights, how many people there were or what their intentions were. Did they have weapons? I assumed it was the landowner, furious I was camping on his land, but it could have been anyone.
Whole eternal seconds passed while I cowered in the spotlights, squinting my eyes and attempting a smile to make me look approachable or not threatening or something. All the while I felt the glare of unknown watchers, expecting that something might be fired at me any second.
And then it happened.
The engine roared back into life and the headlights moved backwards at speed, about ten metres. Then the Land Rover accelerated directly towards me.
All I could do was lie there with my head out of the tent watching as the lights rapidly came closer and closer, the engine drowning out everything else. I knew how a rabbit felt as it came careening towards me, unable to do anything. Then the heavy bulk of the vehicle broke before it could hit me. They left no more than a couple of metres to spare.
Then they reversed and sped away into the night.
They never said a word to me, but clearly, they communicated I should leave.
There was no way I was getting any sleep there so I packed up and left, walking into the night.
I hiked along the river bank, past the neon signal lights and across the iron bridge lit up by the street lights, walking through town and the warehouses booming with nightshift workers, the men stood by boats on the quays, and back into the dark.
I found an exposed spot on the opposite side of the river bank to the car park I had moved from, deciding to wake early and leave before I was noticed.
There are many things you can do to avoid trouble when wild camping, to pitch after dark and leave early, to stay away from urban areas and to keep a low profile, but sometimes you need to pay closer attention to more subtle cues, or you’ll get caught out.
On this occasion, I had no other choice, and I was spotted.
They must have had trouble with antisocial behaviour in that car park before, and I’m certain I wasn’t the first person to attempt camping there, or they wouldn’t have found me so instantly. It’s the only reason for such an aggressive response to someone who was simply passing through on a charity walk.
I woke early and had my tent down by 6 am. As I was packing up my rucksack, I saw what must have been the same Land Rover roaring up the road across the river, wheeling down into the car park once again.
In 385 days of walking the entire coast of Great Britain, it was the only really bad experience with people I had.
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