( Polite notice – the words and photographs herein are all ©️ me. Please do not rob them ).
I’m out and about in the countryside of the Peak District and South Yorkshire quite a bit in my day job, with the rescue team and for pleasure. I’m also a volunteer warden with the Eastern Moors Partnership, albeit i haven’t done much in the last 18 months (due to training my nuts off to get in to the rescue team).
This being ‘out and about a lot’ means that i’m often messaged or rang regarding ‘stuff’ going on in the countryside hereabouts. Often at odd hours of the day and night. Often by wildlife photographers, birders, cyclists and ‘other folk’ who are out and about late and early.
So it was that on Friday night i was sent this picture
of three men wild camping with an open fire in the Burbage Valley.
A ‘leave no trace’ wild camping ethic that does not light open fires is accepted on the Eastern Moors. Lighting fires is not permitted anywhere in the National Park – as detailed here
Wild camping is a very topical topic. Doing so on someone elses land comes under the umbrella of civil law. Once you damage that land / property (eg by damaging trees to source firewood or by digging a fire pit) one enters the realms of criminal law.
On the Eastern Moors you are very likely to get a visit if you’re wild camping (unless you’re very discreet). Carrying the equipment to make an open fire, having an open fire, or having had an open fire will see you asked (to begin with) and then told to pack up and leave – regardless of the time of day or night.
Fire poses a significant threat to landscape like moorland and woodland. Making a fire in the landscape that you have come to enjoy poses a significant risk. Extinguished fires on peat retain enough heat to have heated tree roots to the point that neighbouring trees are fire damaged. This is explained in detail here
Accidental summer fires are potentially the single biggest threat to the fragile ecosystem of the Peak District moors. Since 1976 there have been over 350 reported incidents of ‘wildfires’ of which the majority are commonly started by arson, discarded cigarettes, barbeques and campfires.
As i was at home when i received the message, i forwarded it to the warden team.
Those wild campers were spoken to before 11pm and escorted off at about midnight.
That was Friday night.
On Saturday night i was monitoring ouzels and all the other wildlife in the Valley (amongst other things i saw / heard sheep’s sorrel, red deer, long eared owl, 3 possibly 4 ouzels, grouse, curlew, cuckoo, stonechat, thrush, wren, great tit, willow warbler and chaffinch) when i heard branches being snapped in the woods. Binoculars showed three people hanging hammocks and setting up a fire. Here we go again thought i as i rang the warden ….
We wandered down to the woodland to find three polite young lads from a City 90 minutes away who had come to enjoy a hammock out. Apparently the valley comes highly regarded on wild camping sites on the web. They genuinely had no idea of the risk of an open fire, and they helped us extinguish theirs and scatter the firewood.
Whilst we were removing all residual heat source / fire risk the lads asked the EMP wardens ‘how do you get a job looking after nature?’. They said that nothing on their social media feeds about wild camping had explained risk, nor did it show salaried and volunteer wardens working to protect these places.
We described the landscape and the wildlife and they listened and asked questions. They were amazed to hear an owl lived less than a hundred paces from where they’d set up camp.
We walked out of the valley as a group and at the car park they apologised for what they had (unknowingly) done and thanked us for looking after this place.
I was genuinely heartened by that encounter.
But then …
As i was driving home from rescue team activity on Sunday evening i noticed three people sat by the beck down in the valley bottom. Nothing wrong with that at all except they had no bags with them. And then i turned my attention to the ring ouzel that has second nested right by the footpath in the valley. And then i heard the snapping of branches down below.
As i was about to ring the warden team, one of them drove past me. We had a chat and decided to wander down.
From the valley lip i had seen a grey / blue shape in the woodland which – due to its size – i thought was a patch of bluebells. However as we got closer i realised it wasn’t
Four men in a large gazebo with two firepits and a lot of firewood and an axe and a lot of alcohol.
The first ten minutes of the conversation with them didn’t go well. We were on the receiving end of alcohol-fuelled nasty verbal abuse for asking folks to extinguish fires they’d lit in woodland.
As is often the case the warden asked the campers to extinguish the fires and then asked them to leave due to damage to the woodland. They refused. We asked again, and then we went for a short walk around the woods.
About 200m away there were 3 other campers with hammocks and an open fire. Same natrative from us. They listened, understood, agreed to extinguish the fire and pack up and leave. They were gone in ten minutes.
The second conversation with the gazebo gang went equally poorly. The head warden showed up and explained the issues and the law again to them and asked them to leave.
We then spent 10 minutes at the hammockers fire site deconstructing the fire and carrying beck water up to the fire pit to cool the sub surface.
We then went back to the gazebo gang for more barbed conversation and criticism for what we were and what we were doing. They then left and we deconstructed their fire pits and cooled them.
Except they hadn’t actually left the woods. They had wandered and hidden and then set up camp again.
Due to the increasingly confrontational manner of these encounters the wardens carry radios and on an evening / night shift they often have a vehicle in ‘overwatch’ on the high ground which sometimes has a thermal imaging capability.
The gazebo gang were visited in their new location and refused to leave. Police support was requested. They still refused to leave but packed up and ran away as soon as the wardens moved a distance away.
A few comments that stood out:
‘We can’t leave cos we’ve been drinking … are you authorising us to drink drive … if you force us off here and we drive pissed and we hurt someone that’s your fault’
‘We’re allowed to carry an axe. No we haven’t been cutting trees with it, but we’re allowed to carry it‘
‘It didn’t say on the internet site we looked st that we couldn’t have a fire‘
‘So is this just your job wandering round at night spoiling peoples fun and putting their fires out …. do you get paid ? …. how much ? why would you do this for a job ?
‘Are you wearing a camera …. are we being filmed ??’
Speaking as someone that runs a countryside charity for a living, these last 3 nights have properly opened my eyes to the ‘sharp end’ of some of the ‘wild camping’ issues.
The interaction with the young campers on Saturday night filled me with hope.
After we had walked out of the woodland on Sunday night i sat at Burbage Bridge as darkness finally fell, genuinely concerned for the late night shift of wardens still out there spotting fires and putting themselves in harms way to try and protect landscape and nature, and i just shook my head in despair.
Other than the inevitable outcome of significant serious fire damage to landscape and nature, i don’t know where this particular problem ends. I have heard talk of a professional fire watch team. I do know that the National Park and the emergency services have nowhere near the resources to deal with this growing problem.
I witnessed patience, politeness, empathy and professionalism from the wardens these last 3 nights but i do also fear that working in an aggressive environment where alcohol and fire are combined places them at increasing and unacceptable risk.
….. literally as i wrote this my phone pinged to tell me that ‘people with disposable BBQs are heading out of Edale up Grinds Brook …. ‘
A fourth day in May
An almost bed time phone call to tell me ‘there’s a Range Rover on the moors near Fiddlers Elbow.
I headed out.
A phone call to tell me ‘the Range Rover is stuck and there’s smoke coming out of it’
whilst the fire brigade and the Eastern Moors team were dealing with the vehicle another two 4x4s arrived and starting doing laps of the scene.
Three lads in a Suzuki Jimmy then pulled in to Burbage Bridge car park and had a go at breaking in to the Eastern Moors Land Rover. They said they were ‘taking photographs of it’. They were observed through binoculars and a long camera lens trying the doors and windows. They weren’t holding a camera.
A fifth day in May
A friend calls me to tell me ‘chicken satay skewers are being cooked on a BBQ at SK210846 …. err …. seems to be a bbq disco going on. And there was. And a few phone calls got the wardens over there. No satay skewers were harmed extinguishing the fire
I guess we saw the next bit coming really.
Driving back with a colleague from a rescue team training session we were passing under Higger Tor when we smelt smoke. A lot of smoke. I jokingly quipped that ‘that’s a lot of smoke …. either the moor is alight or Sheffield is’. When we got past Higger we looked right and saw this
…. and then the wind picked up, the Eastern Moors Team and the emergency services arrived and the tenant farmer of Burbage Moor turned up.
The moor was ablaze
I have reason to believe a small patch of burnt area similar to that left by a bbq was the source.
Nick Denniff – the tenant farmer and his son Will took the fight to the fire. Frustrated with delays they headed on to the moor themselves.
Several hours later i made a brew for Liz Denniff as she and friends from neighbouring farms used thermal imaging to try and locate the cows and calves on the moor. They also had a serious chat about where a fire of this ferocity might end up.
Dawn brought fog and rain. The extent became visible in part. Parts of the moor still burnt and the attempts to control it continued right across to Fox House.
A family of grouselings ran around my feet in confusion as the wind constantly reignited the fringes of the fire
Lost for words. But fairly certain there’ll be a ‘Wednesday evening’ and a ‘Thursday’ post.
The Eastern Moors team tell me that even by recent standards of shithousery this Bank Holiday weekend has been unbelievably busy with fires, bbqs and abuse. Early evening until dawn every day.
All i can think of peering in to the massive habitat loss is of the pissed up idiots of the last four nights arguing with Eastern Moors staff about how ‘the fire won’t cause any damage’, being verbally abusive, and telling the wardens to ‘fuck off and stop spoiling our fun’.
There’s no telling some folk.
To be continued ….
NB the words and photographs herein are all ©️ me. Please do not rob them.
