Wild camping - where's the strangest place you've camped?

[boisdevie]

Just being nosy. I see lots of places that you could wild camp - motorway verges, riverbanks etc. Where's the wierdest urban/rural places you've camped.

My own wierdest and very enjoyable was a party we had one time in a huge cave in the Lake District. We have a fire, stereo system (powered by a car battery) and just a few drinks (well OK, loads of drinks). It was a blast.

 

[paulcd]

Hope you weren't too noisy!
I slept in my mates canoe lean-to/shed thingy and crapped in his garden when he had the audacity not to be in when I called.
I have slept on many a mountain path when there was no other flat land.
And I spent one night in the hut at Cadair Idris...they say you come down a fool or a poet...who would know it?

 

[saffy]

As a kid, Chisel beach, Weymouth and its exploding pebbles and UFO's was rather strange.

I have had to sleep in a ship's engine room a few times, inside electrical cabinet - joys of not finishing work whilst dockside and having to go on sea trials. Not exactly camping - more like the routine survival techniques of overstressed commissioning engineers!

 

[Sickboy]

Amongst the black bags full of clothes outside bromley Oxfam
The police were suprisingly polite and gave me a lift home , sweet

 

[MitchelHicks]

At the end of a runway

it was a dissused airfield in wales though and full of sheep which were running about 4 foot away from my head throughout the night. However the high point was a free helicopter ride courtesy of the Army cadet leaders who took us all there. Was what got me interested in camping which lead to an interest in bushcraft so I should be gratefull.

To much info about taking a crap in your mates garden by the way lol but any form of toilet humor is funny

 

[Tadpole]

.
And I spent one night in the hut at Cadair Idris...they say you come down a fool or a poet...who would know it?

me too, along with 11 chaps and 12 girls, on an outwards bound course we only had 12 dry sleeping bags. not as much fun as you'd think

Weirdest place to camp, apart from countless roundabouts, has to be on a fresh landslip at Whale Chine on the “Isle of Wight” the perfectly flat lump of someone’s garden was about 20 foot long and 10 foot wide, and was perched about 40 foot below it’s original place. I was walking around the island and sprained my ankle, forced me to rest for a few days. Short of walking for about a mile along the beach and then up the chine to the road, which was about a mile, and then hang about trying to flag down a local in the dark. It was out of season and there were few people daft enough to be out and about. So I pitched my tent, glad to be out of the wind and above the tide. A week or so later I returned trying to find some sunglasses I’d lost, about 30 foot of that part of the island had been washed away, including my little nest.

 

[w00dsmoke]

I think the weirdets urban camp was on top of a huge concrete water tower...It was hot weather, safer up there and the sunset was awsome.

The weirdest rural camp was an old wartime pillbox that was on the coast and completely covered in sand, I scraped where I thought the door would be and crawled in, it was perfect! We even dug out a gun slit for light.

 

[bushman762]

On the porch of a Holy man's hut in the wilds of India, he shared an evening meal with me and a smoke, which he had a good laugh at (I don't smoke). He had a fire pit with an Iron roof over it to keep fire always on hand...I felt they had lost some of the old ways...but as he had no english our conversations were all in sign language of some sort!

 

[fred gordon]

Probably INSIDE a bothy in the Cairngorms. Rain was so bad and the roof leaked so much I put the tent up inside and had a very comfortable night!

 

[maddave]

On a set of church steps in Amsterdam with 6 others when we couldn't get a hotel room after a night on the pop

 

[bushtank]

On my way home from being on the beer i pulled my back i sat down in a park to try and sort out a lift and fell asleep in a arch on a wall i woke up at 530am very cold and damp i didnt go to work that week

 

[willie]

In a shelterd housing complex under a stairwell =/ ..

1 shandy too many tbh lol

 

[Don Redondo]

on the northern outskirts of Paris near Senlis under a fallen sign in a patch of forest, which said [in the morning when I could read it] *guard dogs patrol this area*. Two days later a Turkish airliner crashed on that very spot

 

[Wayland]

I've camped in a few interesting places on living history events but wild there was an occasion about 15 years ago. It was a trip I had arranged with a friend.

We had decided to do a moonlight walk up the Old Man of Coniston. It was a hill I knew well so there was little danger in doing it with night vision.

The problem came when we left the pub at Eleven and just outside the village it started to rain.

Well actually rain is a bit of an understatement. It felt like someone was pouring a large bucket of water onto us.

We decided after a few miles to head for cover, I knew of an old mine level not far from where we were so we headed for that.

Now levels are normally cut so the water runs out of them, but for some reason this one was different. Some daft soul had cut it so the water ran straight into the tunnel and poured down a deep shaft at the end.

I had never seen this before, it had always been dry on other occasions.

There was a small ledge near the shaft that was just big enough for my mate and I to sleep on head to head. I slept with my feet facing the entrance and Joe with his feet to the shaft. It was unconfortable but dry.

About 3am. something woke me up...... The water was still roaring over the drop into the shaft so I couldn't hear much else but the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up like whiskers.

There was something large shuffling about by the entrance.

I couldn't make out what it was, it was dark, definitely bigger than a sheep and I couldn't think of anything else it could be. I stayed very quiet and watched it.

Whatever it was it was very interested in the entrance because it didn't move away but it didn't seem to want to come in either.

Do you know what it is yet.........

 

[dommyracer]

Do you know what it is yet.........

Is it a horse?

 

[Huon]

Your foot?

 

[8thsinner]

I think the strangest place I have slept was against a boulder on the coast of donegall because thats all there was at the time, I think I only survived the cold costal temperatures because I warmed the rock with my own heat first and it lasted the night.

The best place was in the mourn mountains with my girl friend about 6 years ago.

The totally wierest way of sleeping would have been on the way to the bus stop every sunday for about ten years, YES I can sleep while I walk if I know the way.

To top it off I slept through a car crash too, on the sofa seat in the back of tow truck, fell asleep there and woke up on the floor a few hours after the head on collision, (low speed though) If I wasn't told that we crashed I would never have known...

lmao

 

[nobby]

In a hole left by road menders on the (below the) Rochester Way at Welling. Unfortunately, I fell in wearing my best suit. Too much to drink, I'm afraid.
By choice, bivi'd on Dungeness Point in the mid '60's. As we walked out following the railway track we kept picking up lumps of coal that had fallen from the trains. We dug a hollow in the shingle with our hands and slept each side of a coal fire that we kept going all night.

 

[AndyW]

I think the oddest place I've stayed is under a bridge alongside a canal.

Relatively speaking it was in the middle of nowhere so you'd only get the odd car going over the bridge now and again.

Spent a few nights there. The biggest problem was the party boat if that happened to come through. It was right by a lock. When the lock was opened the water would naturally rise as the water flowed out almost coming over the top

Although the looks from all of the revellers on the boat were a picture

 

[PJMCBear]

The most odd I can think of was in Northern Ireland while serving in the Army. It was a sandbag sangar at the side of the road. It was huge, but the sleeping area was tiny. You couldn't even kneel up in it. You had to crawl in on all fours, and even then there was only just enough room. It was superbly warm though, even in the middle of winter.

Oh, and I once shared a bivi bag with another soldier :yikes: , when the brick got stuck out overnight, without any overnight kit. We were warm, but not very comfortable. That again was in Ireland, at the side of a road, but in a ditch that time.