Bushcraft Basics Ep03: Open Access Land England & Wales

Description

Int this video we have a look the Land Access Laws for Open Access Land in England & Wales.

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Useful Links:

Wild Camping Dartmoor - http://www.dartmoor.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/43909/vi-camping_map_309.pdf

Pitch Up - https://www.pitchup.com/wild-camping/

Rights of Way - https://www.gov.uk/right-of-way-open-access-land/overview

Natural England - https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/natural-england

Ordnance Survey - http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/

Just some of the Places you can visit:

Brecon Beacons - http://www.breconbeacons.org/

Exmoor National Park - http://www.exmoor-nationalpark.gov.uk

Lake District - http://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/

Scotland - http://www.visitscotland.com/about/nature-geography/national-parks/

Tags: woodland,forest,mountains,river,lake,tinder,Survival,Bushcraft,survivor,knife,knives,valley,axe,camping,tent,footwear,hunting,fishing,backpack,clothing,boots,primitive,nature,shelter,shooting,shotgun,rifle,rucksack,flashlight,torch,craft,plants,trees,education,wilderness,family,hobbies,fun,animals,game

Video Transcription

either guys it's Mike remember Sookie bushcraft here and welcome to episode 3 of bushcraft basic skills in last week's episode we had a look at land access from private land in England and Wales and I imagine it was a fairly daunting episode for a lot of people out there because a lot of the land in the British Isles or England and Wales is privately owned and I think it's a bit of a Royal factor face that gaining access to it can be quite difficult and I think that if you've gone out and bought modern survey map I'm hoping that a lot of you out there have explored areas you didn't know existed and seen quite a lot of beautiful woodland and countryside lots of hills and valleys that you've never seen before and have a look at some of the wildlife that's in that area but in this week's episode we're going to be having a look at something a bit different and that's open access land an open access land is effectively land where you have your the ability to exercise the right to roam on foot and it doesn't mean you have to be confined to a footpath like you do on restricted access land like private land with public footpath running through it it is important to note that open access land still can be privately owned and it can be owned by one person or a collection of people it may even be owned by a trust like the Wildlife Trust or National Trust you manage that area but it that doesn't change the fact that it's an open access woodland or open access upland area of maintained terrain an open access land can take many shapes and forms you can have vast areas of wilderness like the Lake District or the brac and beacons you can have small forests or large forests of open access land or you can have common land in common land usually where people have the right in that area to graze their livestock but it's also open access to everybody else who visits as well but although open access land takes many forms the thing that divides them between each other are the local bylaws of that particular patch of land all the bylaws that govern that area there are some open access areas that a tolerance of wild camping and allow it in vast areas that allow people to wild camp there are other areas that don't allow that at all they might be even bigger in size but the bylaws of that area and the people who manage it is specifically stated that you aren't allowed to wild camp there and they don't allow it probably because they're worried about large areas of grassland on dry days or Bracken and people wild camping and making files or using wood-burning stoves and things getting out of control and burning a huge acreage of land away even though that might do the land some good in some people's eyes it that they could pose a risk to other people who are camping in that area or livestock for example so you have to take a lot of things into account so open access although that's at the top of the pyramid underneath many different forms of open access and they're all governed by different bylaws for example a woodland near me is a triple si a special site of scientific interest and although it's open access certain areas are fenced off because they have a particular interest in preserving certain species of wild plant and they don't want people trampling all over them so they have specific bylaws in that area and the way to find out about these bylaws is to look on the Associated website that goes with that national park or open access area and they usually do have websites so if the Wildlife Trust or the National Trust manage a whole ream of woodlands they'll have those woodlands listed on their website and they'll have the bylaws you know listed alongside those woodlands associated to them and if you get to woodlands as well and you're not sure about them there's usually an information board that distributes pamphlets with maps on so you can go into all the trails around the woodland or the National Park will actually learn a bit about it and understand the bylaws but I think an important thing to be able to do is to be able to identify an access land on an ordnance survey map and this is an ordnance survey map of the northern eastern area of the Lake District it's an explorer of series 1 to 25,000 which is the type of ordinance map I always by simply because of the level of detail and if you open up this map we can have a look at what's open access and what's restricted access in terms of what we can roam have the exercise to write to roam on and what we have to stick to the footpath on just to give you an idea of the scale of this map this is probably one of four to six maps that would accurately cover the Lake District

it's an enormous area and you can see that this is really just a small portion of it this is just the northeast area of the Lake District just just a tiny portion it's a very diverse landscape incredibly beautiful I think what we can do is just have a look at this area here this is just a small area but we can see here what's clearly marked as open access land all of this salmon pink here is usually made up of the contours but a lighter salmon color with a salmon border is what's indicating to me that this is all open access land we have a very tiny bit of open access woodland here really not a good example there's a lot more woodland than that in the Lake District this is just a small bit tittering on the edge there and this here would be open access woodland this is deciduous you can see by the symbols and over on my right-hand side here we have coniferous woodlands is actually restricted access woodland or private wouldn't where you would need to add ear to this footpath here this is actually a bridle way has a longer kind of line instead of the short ones which are footpaths but obviously you could still walk along it and you can see the footpath running through the woodland you would need to stick to those weather is on this one here you could roam any way you like in fact this entire area even though there's Bridal ways for horses there's even some green lanes somewhere there's footpaths as well you could stick to all of those paths if you wish and they're there for guidance but being a right to roam area you can roam this whole area although some of it does get very steep you can see by the contouring of the landscape that some of it could be actually quite dangerous because it's mountainous terrain but a very beautiful area so open access land very easy to identify and there are other key features as well that can tell you who can manage the land also the information part of the RS map will cover a lot of different things for you whether there's castles and forts whether it's managed by the National Trust things like nature reserves and also campsites so you can gain an awful lot of information about the area you're going to just by having a map like this so if an access land is very easy to identify in more than survey map and if you do your research online you explore a few areas that you know that it may be around you'll places you want to visit you can get a lot of information by buying a map of that area before you go there but identifying open access land isn't really the problem it's a very easy thing to pick out on modern survey map but knowing what you can do on that open access land is a completely different story because of the variation in types of open access land and the bylaws that are accompanied with them things can get very confusing for example while camping in the brac and beacons the brac and beacons is just under 900 square miles it's quite a large area although I've included a few other ranges in that figure but it's a massive area and it's a very beautiful area to visit and a lot of people wild camp there but are they actually supposed to wild camp there is it legal for them to do that technically no it's not but it is tolerated because the people who wild camp there do it respectfully and they're not there to wild camp technically they're there while camping because the hikes they're doing through the mountains take a few days and they need to camp in between days for it to be a safe camp and to get their energy back to nest down at the end of the day after 8 hours of walking and cook a meal sleep and then get up in the morning and go so those people aren't staying in one spot for a long period of time they're walking pretty much the entire day settling down somewhere they're doing it very respectfully they usually do it in small groups and they generally have a gas stove to cook their meals where they don't have open fires obviously I mean there's very little wood there anyway unless you go down into the woodlands off of the mountains but they're using a gas stove they're cooking their meals a bedding down for the night they're doing so late in the day and they're getting up very early in the morning and continuing with their hike and because of that because of people like that who do it respectfully it's tolerated it's not technically legal and if you look at the websites that go with the bracken beacons and all the tourist information there'll be very little information on advising people to wild camp there are certain areas in the bracken beacons that while camping is tolerated farms who allow their land to be wild camp them and also campsites and youth hostels and such but if you do choose to go to the brac and beacons and wild camp I'm sure you won't run into any problems a lot of people do it and provided you do it respectfully I'm sure that you'll be ok I can't condone it on this video because there's no legislation written down by the people who manage the area that you're allowed to do that but people do it they do it respectfully and that's why it's still tolerated today but there are exceptions and the British Isles I mean even in the Lake District people wild camp a lot of people even write about it in the local paper and they'll give you advice on where to go legally they shouldn't really do this because in the Lake District you should really get the landowners permission as you should all over the country but because it's a very large open acess area and people do hikes there that can take days and days wild camping again can be tolerated in certain circumstances there is an area that's an exception though in England when it comes to wild camping and it's Dartmoor and Dartmoor is about 600 square miles it's quite a large area mostly consisting of common land I think the military do some testing there as well so you obviously have to learn about where they're going to be doing their testing before you head down there and it's a place where wild camping has been

tolerated a little bit more so than places like the brac and beacons in the Lake District and other national parks that tolerate it but with Dartmoor it's actually quite an old bylaw and it's down on paper that you're able to do this and you're able to do it under certain circumstances where you wouldn't be using a vehicle so you're not camping in and out of a vehicle driving around over landing for example camping in a roof tent unless you're in an area where that's allowed like a campsite or a caravan park you camp a hundred metres away from a road or a footpath for example so you're not in public view in your tent and you're keeping out of the way of other people and if you need the toilet you go 100 feet from your camp you bury your waste but you take your toilet roll and things like sanitary towels away with you so you can pack those in a ziplock bag and part about going to the toilet is really a part of the country code all over the country when it comes to exploring these national parks and wooded areas you don't want to be burying toilet roll because animals will go and dig dig it up and then the wind will blow loo roll around all over the place and it just looks like a horrible mess if you're buried burying your waste that's fine but take your toilet roll away with you while I might camping and doing bushcraft I generally burn my loo roll on the fire as to get rid of it so I don't have to carry it with me in your pack

but Dartmoor is a bit of an exception in that respect and I would advise getting OS maps of Dartmoor as well if you tend to go there and learning about where the military are doing their exercises as not to kind of get in the firing line for lack of a better word of what they're doing so that our areas in the country that are open access where you can explore well wild camping is tolerated but not really in a bushcraft context where you're going to be cutting wood making fires and doing the kind of bushcraft activities that you're going to be doing you're not going to be carrying a knife on you can take knives in all these areas but you know for the purpose of camping and using them but generally they're just kept in a backpack out of plain sight is to a deer to the law in the UK and will obviously go into that in a lot more detail in later episodes when we start picking knives so hopefully this video has given you

a bit of a flavor of open access land obviously it's very difficult for me to sit here and just talk at you for a very long time telling you all the rules and regulations over these areas they're really things you need to go out and explore if you want to explore these areas a little bit of proactive 'ti looking online looking at websites looking at vitals getting an OS map will reveal a lot more than what I can in this video but these videos are really designed to just highlight the basics for you to get you started in next week's episode we're going to be having a look at the laws up in Scotland and the laws in Scotland are completely different to anywhere else in the British Isles

there's a beautiful expanse of wilderness up there and they have the right to roam almost all of it with the land reform Act with a few exceptions will obviously discuss all of that next week so see the description below for useful links I really advise you to do that that support this episode and thank you again for watching I'll see you very soon for episode 4 take care guys