The Origin

Everwild Camping started as an idea at 5am. We were at Glastonbury Festival, watching the sun come up after a brilliant week of dancing, feeling free, and briefly forgetting that we were middle-aged parents with a fair amount of responsibility waiting for us at home. Dan and I had always talked about working together, and our partners, Kim and Laura, had often said we would be good at it too. Apparently, if you shook us up together in a bag, you’d get one well-rounded person!

It was somewhere in those early hours that Dan put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I’ve got it: wild camping.” I didn’t need any further explanation; I got it right away. It made so much sense. We are outdoorsy, we like people, and if it all went wrong tomorrow, we’d still be left with a plot of land—and they aren’t making any more of that—so it didn’t seem like the worst idea in the world.

The Reality

We lead busy lives. Dan is a Solar Installation Engineer, and I am a Senior Operations Manager in a control room. Kim is a Teacher, and Laura is a Community Nurse. Kim and I have four boys, while Dan and Laura have a boy and a girl. So, running all of this while keeping our everyday lives going has been challenging, to say the least.

We spent a long time searching for the right piece of land, climbing over fences, trudging across fields, surveying woods, and even getting close to purchasing another place on a riverbank near Doncaster. £550 in pre-application advice from planning, along with a not-so-supportive parish council, put that one to bed.

The search continued, and then we found Everwild on an obscure land agent’s site, it was being operated as a dog training facility. We knew right away that it was the one. It had no strict covenants, ancient trees, burial grounds, Roman forts, or remnants of the Ark of the Covenant. Woodland is well protected in this country, so finding some that can be used for wild camping is rare.

Somehow, we found it, and we set to work turning it into a campsite. Over the past year, watching it become what it is now has been amazing. Friends, family, and acquaintances have all helped us create a beautifully unique place, and we are genuinely grateful for every pair of hands, every idea, and every bit of encouragement along the way.

We learned some valuable lessons along the way too,like the fact that getting rid of static caravans is a nightmare. You can’t even give them away. If you are moving earth or hiring machinery, double your initial cost estimate, and anything to do with planning and parish councillors will eat your time.

We also found our natural roles in the project. I write the soppy bios, deal with councillors, and handle the paperwork, while Dan leads on the heavy lifting and the genuinely hard work. We have both developed new expertise: Dan can now strip and rebuild a mower in minutes, and I can now build a website.

The Here and Now

We truly believe we have created a campsite that is unique and will appeal to people who want to get closer to nature. There seems to be a growing need for people to find a space where they can switch off, breathe, and simply be outdoors. Everwild is one of those spaces. We have resisted the temptation to cram people in because we want to protect that sense of peace. As we become more established, we don’t intend to lose that feeling. We do, however, hope to make the space even more beautiful and may eventually even fit a toilet block or shower! For now, though, we are keen to offer the kind of feral, free-range experience that kids and big kids love.

We hope you stay with us again and again, and that you become part of Everwild and its future. We have so many plans for this place, and we hope they lead to unique experiences, shared adventures, and great memories for many people, for many years to come.