Ripple in the pond

So was this the ripple in the pond?

Summertime Blues

Was this the moment that someone though; Hey! it's about time that we in England & Wales have something similar. If it was, it certainly seems to gotten people interested.

Well when I say interested I mean the 1355 people who have signed the E-Petition to legalise Wild Camping in England & Wales.

Now although 1355 doesn't sound a lot of people; it has passed the figure that the Scottish Parliament had when it was deciding about the Scottish Outdoor Access Code. The difference with the Scottish number is that theirs was a public consultation on the matter, where as our E-petition is only a petition to get the chance of legal wild camping looked at.

1355 signatures is a good number of people considering that nearly all of the information about the E-P has come from bloggers and word of mouth; all of the big players (Ramblers Association, BMC)in the outdoors arena have managed to ignore the E-P, even small groups like the Backpacker Club have chosen to act as if it doesn't exist.

Also a lot of the outdoors forum groups have been quite dismissive of it and some have been quite nasty in replied comments.

But through all this the E-P has been collecting votes; back in March I thought that the votes had peaked and that they would only be increasing slowly, on the 15th March the votes stood at 770 votes; so 580+ votes in a month is not a bad return.

A big thank you to everybody who have already signed; and if you haven't here's the address again

Legalise Wild Camping in England & Wales