Bushcraft Basics Ep02: Private Land England & Wales

Description

In this video we have a look at the Land Access Laws over Privately Owned Land in England and Wales.

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Useful Links:

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/

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

Exmoor National Park - http://www.visit-exmoor.co.uk/exmoor-national-park - http://www.peakdistrict.gov.uk/

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

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Video Transcription

hi there guys it's Mike from mcq bushcraft here and welcome to episode 2 of bushcraft basic skills in last week's episode we had a look at an introduction as to what's to come from the training series just a brief one really to give you a flavor about what it's all about and why you'll be at the end of it what if hopes to offer people out there but in this week's episode we're going to be having a look at land accessibility focusing specifically on private land in England and Wales will obviously cover open access land in England and Wales as well as well as covering the laws up in Scotland but those will be coming in episodes 3 and 4 because it's best to break this down over a period of three episodes so people get a very clear understanding of what it is they can do out there and how they can achieve it when you start covering the broad topic which is land accessibility in the British Isles it can open up other avenues as well and impose many more questions than just going into a plot and seeing what you can do that knife floor and being able to carry knives and use them fire making these are all things that are a part of bushcraft and there'll be questions that are thrown straight back when you actually access a piece of land what can you carry a knife there how do you carry a knife there how do you use it there and can you make fire these things are going to be covered later on in the training series when they become relevant when we actually start choosing knives and using them and when we start making fires

before I go into the specifics of accessing land private land in England and Wales I want to touch on something that I think is very important and it's people's perceptions of the environment around them and it's something that's not often talked about but it but I meet a lot of people in the bushcraft circle and I see a lot of people who view the world around them is a very restricting place and they see basically the the fact that almost all land in England and Wales is privately owned and it can be an enormous hurdle for people starting bushcraft they think I want to go out and do these things I want to go out and camp and explore environments and spend time in nature and see the sights and sounds that it has to offer but I can't because all this around me is owned by other people and I need their permission to do so not entirely true but on the whole that can be an enormous hurdle for people and it can basically put your mindset into a very negative gear where you start interpreting things around you as bang juries and hurdles and you think well I can't do this and I can't do that because I can't gain access to these places and it can be very difficult for people to stomach and and it's something I hear echoed all around the bushcraft community here in the British Isles and certain parts of Europe and almost all over the world it really depends where you live and what your environments like around you what I often try and do is I think back to when I was a child I played outdoors all the time when I was a kid we hunted we fished we explored environments all over the place and we saw places in environments and woodlands around us as opportunity and adventure we didn't see boundaries and hurdles because as children that's what our minds were were tuned in into you know topper tunity in adventure and we we did all these things and we explored everywhere and we had an amazing time but I think as you get older and logic starts to set in certain bad habits can set in as well and you start thinking well I'm an adult I can't go over there I'm not supposed to and that's fair enough you don't want to break the law but at the same time you can forget how you can actually access these places and you forget about the reams and reams of public footpaths and national trails that run all over the countryside and the wilderness that's in this country and all these national parks and all these places you can go and you forget that all it takes is for you to do a bit of groundwork and you can have amazing times and explore vast terrains and open up opportunities for yourself to do camping and it just takes a little bit of ground work on behalf of the individual no amount of it of moaning about the state of the world will change anything in fact it'll just plunge you into a more negative way of thinking you need to be positive and you need to do some groundwork and the world will seem like a much better place for you I promise you I've recently moved house and the first thing I do when I move house to a very rural area with lots of countryside so I buy an OS map like this one here an explorer series scale one to twenty five thousand because for the level of detail that it offers and buying an OS map suddenly makes you realize the the sheer amount of opportunity there is out there and what you can do all of the National Trails it tells you what's coniferous woodland what's deciduous what's private was open access land it shows you all the footpaths through all the private land in the areas what's managed by Forestry Commission grassland the contours of the land what's maintenance terrain what's hills where the valleys are where the rivers are it's a fantastic way of getting a bird's-eye view on the landscape around you and if you haven't already bought one and you live in a rural area I advise you to do so or if you live in a city and you that you go to an area out there that you'd like to explore buy an OS map it'll tell you so much about that area and immediately you can put your pack on take some food and water with you and go out on a very pleasant hike through the countryside or through some woodlands or even through a national park and have an amazing day or weekend out with your family and friends and start exploring and begin those initial stages into crafts skills but let's have a closer look at this OS map here if we look at this OS map here it tells me pretty much everything I need to know about the environment I wish to explore this is a tiny portion of a very large OS map covering quite a big national park here in the British Isles and I'm just looking at a small portion of it just to communicate to everybody out there what can be achieved by just buying an OS map this is open access land here and you can see it's a lightly yellow color with a salmon border and you can see it stems all the way up here and this is just a tiny portion of it this is mountainous terrain or hilly terrain we can see here we have open access woodland it's defined by a bright yellow color with a salmon border as well and that's really the definition of open access land it's a much lighter color and it has a salmon border you can see private woodland there too which is a darker color and private land which is white and I can see by looking at this this is grassland here and if we go over here we can see Bracken and such - so we've got Bracken and grassland we've got coniferous woodlands ear and coniferous woodland

deciduous woodland just there I'm understanding all of this just by the symbols presented to me on this map but on private land you must stick to the footpath and you can see a footpath running here you would have to stick to that footpath and the law is that you should not deviate from it so a no ice map like this can tell you a hell of a lot about the terrain araignee even national trails that are running around here so it's an amazingly useful tool to have and if you live in a rural area and you haven't bought one I advise you to do so because it will tell you quite a bit about what can be done in your area so you can see why having an arse map is so important a lot of people say a nice map might kill the surprise and adventure but really doesn't because it doesn't really give you the feeling you have when you're in those environments you know you don't truly understand them just by looking at an OS map you just know they're there and you know a little bit about what to expect I think if you're living in the modern world they're a fantastic resource to utilize simply because if you're looking to the day hikes and explore different environments and you live in a country like I do in the British Isles where a lot of land is privately owned you really want to take advantage of it as best you can so have being able to see where those trails are through woodlands and valleys and across lakes is a wonderful thing to be able to do and you could then go exploring and get a bit of Intel fantastic Intel from a map like this about the environment that's around you and it really is a very good advantage to have I've met a lot of people a lot of landowners through having OS maps and going exploring and then asking them for permission to do other things on their land like camping and even doing bushcraft courses and it's opened up fantastic relationships and years on I've been able to do all sorts of things like fishing and hunting so it's about starting at the beginning and then opening up those opportunities I see a lot of guys who approach landowners and they say oh you know I'd like to approach you and do some shooting and hunting on your land and decent camping and have a fire you need to put yourself in the perspective of a landowner if I owned a woodland which I wish I did but I don't and somebody came knocking on my door I didn't know who they were and they said um hi my name is so-and-so and I live around the area I'm interested in bushcraft first of all a lot of people don't know what the word bushcraft means and you have to stand there and explain it to them normally I would say I'm interested in wildlife observation which is what I use but I knock on people's doors ask for permissions what I do and often the best thing to do is just to take it right at the beginning I spoke to somebody other day and I said to them look I'm really interested in wildlife observation and I will have a look at what sort of birds and owls you have in that woodland down there I'm also interested in wild plants and fungus and immediately you will get a feeling a gut feeling from that individual if they suddenly say oh well there isn't any fungus around at this time of year mate you'll know that they don't really want you to be in that woodland because they've just put up their defenses immediately the armors gone on and they're not interested but if they say all right okay um well yeah I mean you know you're more than welcome to go and check out the woodland and you know you're in there and you can say okay well you know can I come by on Friday evening and just have a look at what sort of owls you've got calling now I won't I won't cause any problems in our park just in a where shall I park and all this kind of stuff then they'll be far more open to you and they'll see it just a decent person and you're right at the beginning of that relationship if you go in the whole hog and you want to camp there and you want to make a fire then they'll probably say no because they'll be worried that you're going to burn the place down and they don't know you're responsible they don't know that you know you know how to make a safe fire maybe you don't see you shouldn't even be making a fire just yet say take it right from the beginning and sort of imagine it like you're building a relationship with someone you don't go in all the way first off you you want to tread lightly and just learn about that person like they want to learn about you and then at a later stage you might say look I've got some fantastic footage of some of the owls in the woodland on an a haven't said this is okay but do you think I'd be allowed to spend the night there I've got a hammock I could sleep in the hammock and get some footage with my night vision gear of the owls flying around at night and you may not even have night vision gear but at the same time you're just creating a perspective of you're a guy who is interested in the countryside and the creatures that live within it and then five years down the line you might be camping in that woodland with an air rifle shooting with pigeons and eating them and making fires and you might have a permanent shelter set up the guys that you built that and you might be a really good mate now like I am some of the guys who I know and and that's really how to build relationships on private land somebody I spoke to you the other day somebody I know very well I spend a lot of time with him doing bushcraft the way he's got to gain access to a lot of woodlands is through green woodworkers because a lot of green woodworkers own woodlands and he spent time with a lot of these green wood workers doing carving with them and they've said we'll look if you want to come back here and do some camping we're more than happy for you to do that and suddenly it's opened up a whole load of opportunity - I think once you get that little slice of heaven and you can go somewhere and do the things you want to do suddenly you stop complaining and you start seeing the world in a completely different light and you're very much happy to just walk along those footpaths and see beautiful landscapes because you've got that area where you can go and do some camping and you know you suddenly become content but it isn't long before you want to start exploring other things as well but then you've got that skill set and you can start opening up opportunities around you and approaching other people when I was really into my shooting when I was a kid I used to put whole days aside with my mates and we used to drive around and speak to landowners and sometimes people would say no and other times they'd say yeah and I opened up at a 700-acre landscape of beautiful landscape in the Cotswolds of shooting and we shot there for about seven or eight years there are all kinds of things we used to do there it was amazing and unfortunately a syndicate Balter out in the places is gone though for us but we have great memories of that of that time and I'm not sour about it at all because you open up other opportunities around you to do those kinds of things but I've talked an awful lot in this video not only have I covered the legalities on private land in England and Wales I've also spoke a little bit about the psychology behind your perception and how you interpret the environment Iranian just to really put yourself in a positive frame of mind there's a lot you can do out there but also some advice as well upon approaching people how to get permissions and I think an action point for this video is to get yourself an OS map of the area you live in or an area you wish to explore and learn a bit about how to identify the signs on the OS map so that's really the action point for this video and let me know in the description on how you get on write a comment below and tell me a bit about what you've explored and about the sort of things you've covered on your iOS map because it doesn't take an expert to look at an OS map and actually see what you can and can't do there's an actual key on the ice map on every West map that covers all of the sights and sounds you can see on them it only takes a brief look to see what you can and can't do so it's a very good thing to have but I hope you've enjoyed this video and I hope it's answered a few questions on private land in England and Wales specifically focusing on private lands and we will cover in next week's episode open access land in England and Wales because that can open up far more of an opportunity for people exploring national parks and wild camping and using gas stoves to cook food and such is far more open to people doing this kind of things but you do have to be aware that certain places have certain bylaws and restrictions because of conservation issues but I hope you've enjoyed this this episode of bushcraft basic skills and I'll see you very soon in another episode next Saturday at 5 p.m.

thanks again guys and take care you