Rosie Jewell – How can we expect people to care for the countryside if they are denied access to it? We must fight for our right to roam
When people ask me where I’m from, I wryly tell them “the middle of nowhere”. So, imagine my surprise when I saw that my old landlord and the remote place where I grew up were making national headlines over a court battle for the right to wild camp on Dartmoor.
Alexander Darwall bought the 1,619-hectare (4,000-acre) Blachford estate on southern Dartmoor in 2011. Dartmoor is the only place in England where wild camping is allowed, in designated areas, without permission from a landowner. Darwall successfully contested this right in court, arguing that the right to wild camp – as opposed to walking or picnicking – on the moors never existed. Then an appeal restored it. Now, he’s taking the case to the supreme court.
Dartmoor is only a tiny sliver of England, and only a tiny portion of its visitors are campers. But in the process of tussling over whether sleeping in a tent counts as “recreation”, Darwall has catalysed a much bigger, broader movement – one fighting for our “right to roam” across the English countryside, including its rivers, woodlands and green belts.
My family and I saw all this coming years ago. We had permission to go wherever we wanted in the countryside around our house until Darwall bought it. But I have never forgotten the freedom I had. And I know what we stand to gain, across the country, if this movement from the middle of nowhere wins.
From 2006, when my mum, brother and I first moved to a rundown farmhouse nestled in a valley on the estate, until 2012 when I left for university, Blachford was more than my playground. It was my natural environment, like a pond is for a tadpole. We were on friendly terms with our old landlord and the farmer, and they didn’t mind one jot where we went on foot or even on horseback, as long as we behaved responsibly.
Soon I knew every tree, stile and gate within an hour’s walk. There was the overgrown copse with a grassy path running around its perimeter where I pretended to be a horse, leaping over fences built with bracken and fallen branches. After I’d exhausted myself doing that, I’d climb the oak tree on the edge of the copse and lie along a particularly squishy, moss-carpeted limb. I wandered among regal beech trees and clambered over the colossal remains of an ancient riverbed. Each field had a distinct character and ideal use: this one for cross-country training; this one for letting my pony gallop; this one for blackberry picking. And then there was the moor: bleak, wild and etched with bronze-age stone circles – echoes of people who lived on the same land thousands of years ago.
During those years, my family and I experienced profound difficulties. But through all of it, the land gave me the nutrients I needed to thrive. Wandering through the fields, lying in my oak tree, or stomping across the moor – I didn’t just feel happier, I felt like me. It’s no exaggeration to say that the land shaped me, saved me, and meant more to me than the books I read or the food I ate.
Just as the land cared for me, I cared for it. If a gate was coming off its hinges, a cow had escaped, or a sheep was having trouble lambing, I would run home and Mum would call the farmer. Occasionally, I came across a dying pheasant that had been shot in the wing and overlooked by the shoot’s dogs, and dutifully wrung its neck.
I now know that my experience of responsible roaming was a rare one. With only 8% of the English countryside accessible to the public, it’s no wonder people see the land around them as not theirs to explore, enjoy, and care for. No wonder they feel so detached as to be able to leave litter in the countryside. No wonder kids are getting outside less and less, and missing out on opportunities to get curious, solve problems, take risks and explore the limits of their bodies. And why would we view our land and wildlife as worthy of protection if we don’t know and love them?
Darwall bought our part of the Blachford estate in 2013, by which point we had moved to another property farther up the valley, and I’d started university. Each holiday I came home to a less hospitable place. Where before there had been mutual trust, responsibility and freedom, there were now padlocked gates, new fences and more pheasants – hundreds of them. Eventually Mum told me everywhere was now out of bounds except one path behind our house and the common below the moor – something about insurance. Strangely, I never met Darwall. Like so many other landowners across the country, he was just a name: a mysterious force that came between me and the land I loved.
My mum moved away in 2018, and I didn’t return until a few years later. I walked all day across the southern part of the moor and eventually wandered down the hill to see my beloved old house. I met the new tenants, who humoured me as I told them how much this place meant to me. It dawned on me that in all likelihood, they weren’t allowed to go to any of the special places – the fields, the tracks, the woods – I had known and loved.
We are in a crisis of disconnection and dispossession, but we and the land have so much to give each other if allowed the chance to connect. It’s time we had the same rights of access in England that are enjoyed in Scotland and many other European countries. The Right to Roam campaign is calling for just that: the chance for all of us to know and care for the place we call home.
- Rosie Jewell is an illustrator and graphic designer
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/19/dartmoor-england-countryside-right-to-roam
