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 field trips, with families, drawn to nearby Swanage’s gentle sands, crowds and dripping ice cream cones. But best of all – alone, to walk for miles along these boundless clifftops, thighs aching, face glowing from wind and sun, heart pounding and happy; or at camp, where things are self-sufficient and forever Swallows and Amazons.

Five-gallon barrels of hedgerow wine. Sweetcorn, berries and beans. The fruits of watching, weeding and waiting are all packed up and brought campward, along with a clutch of frozen squirrels. We load up rucksacks. The walkers head for Worth Matravers and the waterbabies to Kimmeridge where we inflate the dinghy and make for our favourite bay.

In Chapman's Pool

Afterwards we wend our way slowly down towards Chapman’s Pool – pebbles careening in front of foot, down the sheer sheep track. It's three-quarters of a mile down. Few come here. It is bleak, isolated, wonderful and watched over by the Houns-tout – a steep, foreboding charcoal-grey mound. A thin coverlet of browning grass and a clump of trees are all that ever seem to brave its summit. A handful of fishermen used to work from Chapman's Pool, their sheds and a sympathetic slipway the only signs of life. No names on the sheds. No 'for sale' signs. They are passed – these crude, tar-black, lovely buildings – from generation to generation or friend to friend.

Waves crash beyond the bay, calming within the pool. Four low tides a day make for a cool, safe harbour to swim across. I swim to the muddy shale beds, where ammonites and bivalves lay, white, in the sediments. Tuppence to fist-sized, some loose, some embedded, mosaic-like, in solid slabs of rock. I swim back and meet the dinghy. A dozen shimmering mackerel lay in the bow. Turquoise, emerald, silver, striped. Later, the clouds will mimic their skin patterns in monochrome.

Dinner on the beach

Fish are gutted at the shoreline. Crabs scutter for the entrails. Rocks are arranged into a firepit and driftwood benches around that. Smoke infuses our clothing; stings our eyes; thaws our faces.

We unpack the griddles and roast squirrels on driftwood sticks; vegetables in the embers, animals in the flames. The fossil-hunters return for dinner. This is pliosaur and plesiosaur country. Keen-eyed, they carry back femur parts and photographs to admire. These reptiles were huge. If the rocks were to yield up these entire mighty beasts, how many would stretch from here to Portland, shimmering on the horizon?

We sit and we wait, watching the fish turn gently grey, watching the sky mute darkly, cocooned in the drizzle, throwing stones at makeshift cricket stumps, and sometimes, gently and aimed to miss, at each other.

Later, halfway up the cliff, we stop and flop on to a grassy bank. Glow worms twinkle in the brush, bright as LEDs. A barn owl, bright-faced, caught in torchlight. Crickets chirrup, and the sea makes white noise. Bright lights and cars are a long, long way from here. Nature roars out of the silence and quietly, powerfully overwhelms it.

Legalities

Except for Scotland and parts of Dartmoor, wild camping is technically illegal in the UK. Some land owners, however, will give you permission if you ask nicely – many have realised they can make a bit of cash letting out their fallow fields. For more information see: www.legalisewildcamping.com