A long way from the bright lights

Wild camping in Dorset

I am in a cloud. To my left, Swyre Head glows faintly gold in the distance. To my right, sheep, like small fluffy clouds within a cloud, converse with indignant baa-ing. All is damp. I wait, listening for signs of civilisation. Nothing bar wind and sheep. No voices. No engines.

I am here, with friends, on the barest-of-bare bones campsites – a friendly farmer, a field, a toilet, precarious water supply and as much old hedgerow kindling as you can gather. We make a narrow log cleft. A twig pyramid within it. Fire. The kettle goes on. The cloud closes in.

Welcome to Purbeck

This is Purbeck in Dorset, where South meets South West across the Jurassic coastline, weather is microclimatic, and the civilised world stops about five miles from the coast-proper. The best bits are accessible only to those with rugged boots, anoraks and the will to walk up and down inclines which sometimes look as though they had best be tackled on an abseiler’s rope.

In an hour, the sky will turn a brilliant blue, and the jewel-like vibrancy of this pastoral idyll will be clear again. Undulating fields will sparkle emerald, cut with dew. Harebell clusters will nod pale lilac heads tanged with brine in the breeze and, if I am lucky, I will spot tiny wild orchids on the clifftops.
These gems are well-guarded. Barbed wire is everywhere – not to keep in livestock, but to keep people out. In low season, and sometimes during otherwise-still summer nights, the thunder-rumble of tanks and the boom of ordnance swell low and strong in the ear. This is army country, and it is only the presence of the military ranges which has kept this area as unchanged as it was 100 years ago. The roads and paths are open only by permission. Here is true, pure wildness, ironically preserved by the human urge to destroy.

Alone on the clifftops

I have been coming here for many years, walking paths long gone, read from crumbling Ordnance Survey maps, finding myself nose to nose with cattle in solid banks of yellow, coconut-scented gorse, on geology....

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