How To Wild Camp Anywhere And Not Get Busted

It’s that time again — another ‘how-to’ shar­ing the essen­tial tools of the adven­ture cycle-touring trade. This time I’m going to deal with what is often a stress­ful thought for every rider:

“Where the hell I am going to sleep tonight?!?”

Looks idyllic, but I woke up when a bird relieved itself upon me

It’s a right, not a privilege

It is my belief that there is always, always some­where to sleep that doesn’t involve hand­ing over your pass­port and a wodge of cash. I believe that it is every human being’s nature-given right to sleep without hav­ing to pay for the privilege.

Maybe some would con­sider this delu­sional, delin­quent, ideal­istic, bar­baric or (I often hear) impossible! But in my exper­i­ence it’s a self-fulfilling proph­ecy, and that’s exactly what you need to get you to that place where you can rest your head.

I mean any­where

In four months of cyc­ling from Eng­land to Tur­key, across all of West­ern and East­ern Europe, Andy and I spent a total of five nights in paid accom­mod­a­tion. (Two in Ams­ter­dam, the Neth­er­lands; one in Tongeren, Bel­gium; one in Ver­dun, France; and one in a ran­dom motel some­where in Romania, if you’re interested.)

It was dif­fi­cult and stress­ful and caused a few argu­ments — at first. But soon, the real­isa­tion that it was not only pos­sible but actu­ally quite easy became a source of incred­ible liberation.

Camp­ing in chilly winter Tur­key. Photo by Andrew Welch

I put most of our suc­cess down to stub­bornly refus­ing out­right to even con­sider paid accom­mod­a­tion as an option. It wasn’t an option. We were on the most thread­bare shoes­tring of a budget ima­gin­able. (And we were both experts in stubbornness!)

If an aver­age hostel in Europe costs 10 EUR a night, our first four months would have cost us an extra 1,200 EUR each (on top of our 4.7 EUR-per-day food budget) — about 20% of what I thought was my entire round-the-world trip budget for sev­eral years! Com­pare that to 150–200 EUR for a good-quality light­weight tent and the num­bers speak for themselves.

Talk to people

If you’re unsure about your sur­round­ings and there are people around, stop and talk to them. 99% of people, when asked, will be very happy to help you find a suit­able spot for your tent, and it’s always best to have the loc­als’ bless­ing if pos­sible — what’s the worst that can happen?

Often you’ll find that this will lead to other social encoun­ters of the most wel­come (and wel­com­ing) kind, and this is one of the envi­able exper­i­ences that few but the cycle tourer have the oppor­tun­ity to enjoy.

Hun­garian hospitality

Know when to stop

If you’re out in open coun­try, allow at least an hour to loc­ate a suit­able place to camp. If you’re in or approach­ing a town or city, you need to con­sider whether you need to stop for any­thing, and if you’ve got time to make it through and out the other side. You’ll also need time to check the area and set up your camp before dark — put­ting up a tent in the dark isn’t fun, but cook­ing in the dark isn’t such an issue.

Obvi­ously the amount of time you need will depend to a large extent on where you are — some­times you’ll be spoilt for choice, but if you’re not in a par­tic­u­larly remote area, chances are you’ll need to ride for a while before you find the beach/spinney/pastureland you’re look­ing for.

If you’re in a busy area, have din­ner first, and sneak off the road to your camp­ing spot under cover of dark­ness. It’s not ideal, but you’re unlikely to be noticed after dark, unless you wave your stove around a lot.

Under­stand your­self better

Yes, there’s stuff liv­ing out there — mostly dogs and ants, in my exper­i­ence (and, if in Eng­land, little bun­nies). If a dog finds you in your poly­thene cocoon in the woods, it’ll leave you well alone (after nois­ily swip­ing your break­fast if you left it out­side). No animal will come to you look­ing for a fight, because ran­dom aggres­sion hasn’t gen­er­ally been an evol­u­tion­ar­ily stable strategy.

And humans don’t roam the fields and forests at night bran­dish­ing lethal weapons. Why? Because they’re afraid of humans roam­ing the fields and forests at night bran­dish­ing lethal weapons. Get over it! Once you’ve quashed the nerves, you’ll start see­ing poten­tial camp­ing spots every­where, and bor­ing your friends by incess­antly point­ing them out.

A lot of our sur­vival in the past depended on our over­act­ive ima­gin­a­tions, which were (and still are) great at cook­ing up wild fantas­ies of sav­age beasts and hos­tile tribes hid­ing behind every rock. Because of this, and espe­cially once it gets dark, people are sur­pris­ingly unin­quis­it­ive of any­where out­side the places they already know.

Wild camp­ing in the Jordan Rift Valley

Now, of course, we’ve slaughtered all the man-eating wild­life and have (mostly) got used to liv­ing in each other’s com­pany, so it’s safe to chill out. I’ve been hid­ing my tent just out of sight of roads all over three con­tin­ents for months on end and have never encountered any­thing more than an invit­a­tion to come and sleep some­where warmer and/or enjoy a glass or two of the local tipple. It’s worth men­tion­ing that my exper­i­ence is entirely typ­ical of bicycle travellers.

Actu­ally, you’ll be sur­prised where you can get away with put­ting a tent, sleep­ing rough or blagging a hori­zontal sur­face! Some­times, in ‘emer­gen­cies’, it’s been fun see­ing what’s pos­sible in this regard. Andy and I have slept in bus shel­ters, inner-city parks, build­ing sites, road­side verges, sub­ways, empty gar­ages, pet­rol sta­tions, fish­ing boats, tramps’ hov­els, hotel gar­dens, under tables, even about five metres from a busy main road in full view of any­one who cared to stop and take a look!

Pos­sibly the worst camp­site in the world

The last one wasn’t ideal (the mud was really sticky), but I got my head down undis­turbed for a few hours!

Of course, if you’re out in the Sahara or cross­ing the Mon­go­lian steppe, you can put a tent any­where you please. The world is your camp­site — enjoy it!

The best night’s sleep of my life!

Cam­ou­flage

Your main sleep­ing option is your tent. Try to get one in a suitably-inconspicuous shade of green — Vaude and Hil­le­berg make some lovely col­ours. This will serve you best in the wide vari­ety of envir­on­ments you might find your­self in on a world tour, because if it’s green, stuff grows there, and if stuff grows there, people live there, and people don’t see a green tent in a green field at night. Other col­ours will get you by as well.

Take off any shiny labels on the out­side of the tent. Remem­ber how use­ful you thought the reflect­ive patches on your pan­niers would be at night — well, now they’re use­ful for show­ing passing drivers exactly where you are. Make sure they’re facing away from the road!

Hid­ing from traffic in Iran

I used a green poncho as a water­proof in heavy rain, a pic­nic blanket, and finally a great way to make my bike incon­spicu­ous and keep it dry at night.

You don’t always need a tent

I trav­elled with a bivvy bag for sev­eral months, in addi­tion to the tent, and used it whenever I could. I miss it a lot and wish I had it back. It’s a lot more incon­spicu­ous than a tent, and I much prefer the feel­ing of sleep­ing out­doors than that of being cooped up in a cramped tent.

You can also util­ize a poncho as a tar­paulin shel­ter (or a ‘basha’ in military-speak), if you have a bit of light para-cord or a few cargo bun­gees such as the ones that might be strap­ping bags to your bike. Slide under this with your bivvy bag and chopped-down foam mat and you’ll stay dry even in a downpour.

Sleep­ing under a poncho strung up as a basha

For the full Brit­ish Army exper­i­ence, you can leave your boots on as well. (Prob­ably best not to bring the SA80 though.)

Relax, it’ll be fine

I guess the main mes­sage that I’m try­ing to get across here is that you should pre­pare as well as pos­sible, and then, when you’re on the road, never give up hope. Hope is one of the most power­ful motiv­at­ors we have.

Keep in mind the idea that there’s a sleep­ing place at the end of the day’s pro­cess which is wait­ing for you. Once you get the hang of find­ing it, you’ve got a depend­able tool for get­ting a good night’s sleep any­where in the world — free!

If you liked this, you might be inter­ested in my Flickr album ‘Where I Sleep’…

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