JO DYSON: Hello and welcome to the National Trust podcast. I'm
Jo Dyson Adventure enthusiast and Communications manager at
the National Trust. Today, I'm in Poole Harbour on the
southwest coast of England. And I'm heading to a little island
renowned for its rare species, to learn all there is to know
about a great British pastime - camping.
I've loved camping since I was a child, but I'm no expert. So
joining me on this adventure is Sian Lewis. As well as being a
very experienced camper. Sian is also the author of the National
Trust's book, Wild Escapes, which showcases 40 of Britain's
wildest locations including where I'm headed - Brownsea
Island.
Thanks to a group of adventure loving boys in 1907, Brownsea
Island became the birthplace of scouting, and is where history
and the great outdoors merge to create a unique camping
experience.
Just strolling along the harbor front. It is a hive of activity,
more industrial than I thought actually, you can see lots of
cranes in the background, and this must be the cafe where I
said I would meet Sian.
Sian.
SIAN LEWIS: Hey, lovely to meet you.
JO DYSON: I've long followed your outdoor adventures on
Instagram. So I'm so excited that we're going to be going on
an adventure of our own. Should we go and get that boat then?
SIAN LEWIS: Yeah, let's do it.
GENERIC: Brownsea? Brownsea?
JO DYSON: So the ferry has just set off from Poole Harbour -
It's already becoming a slight dot in the distance and it's
pretty calm today, there's just little waves and the light is
really glistening off the top of them. What got you into all the
sort of adventures and travel?
SIAN LEWIS: I've been into camping and swimming since I was
little. I still think I love to just head off with a tent and a
swimsuit and, and go exploring, especially in the UK. We've got
some really amazing wild corners to discover.
JO DYSON: What are some of your sort of favourite places in the
UK?
SIAN LEWIS: Probably my favourites are the islands
because they're just so special and they really give you that
feeling of escaping from real life. So there's Brownsea which
we're going to today, there's also the Isles Of Scilly off the
Cornish Coast and there's also Eilean Shona, in Scotland in the
Inner Hebrides, which is where J M Barry was inspired to create
Neverland where Peter Pan lives and it really does feel like a
Neverland. So I think probably the islands are my, are my
secret favourites.
JO DYSON: To really get away from it all.
SIAN LEWIS: Yeah.
JO DYSON: That was so quick. I feel like we've only just got on
the boat and we're here already and it just seems worlds away,
doesn't it? From the busyness of Poole Harbour, and now we're
presented with this really sort of serene landscape.
SIAN LEWIS: Yeah so you can also kayak straight to the island, or
get the ferry which only takes 20 minutes. So it's actually
pretty close to the mainland even though it really feels like
a different world.
GEORGIA SIMPKIN: Jo! Sian! Hi!
JO DYSON: Oh, hello. You must be Georgia?
GEORGIA SIMPKIN: Yes Welcome to Brownsea Island. I am, I'm
Georgia. I'm the outdoor holidays manager.
JO DYSON: So we're surrounded by turreted buildings, presumably
we're not camping right here?
GEORGIA SIMPKIN: That's correct. So this is, just the entrance to
the island. The campsite is around a 20 minute walk from
here. But on normal occasion, we run our luggage runs. So you
would put all your gear in at one of our trailers and then we
would take it up to the campsite for you. But on this occasion,
we do have a vehicle.
JO DYSON: Right shall we get going then?
SIAN LEWIS: Yeah, let's go.
GEORGIA SIMPKIN: Here we are! We've arrived at the campsite.
JO DYSON: What a beautiful spot with sea views. What are all
these signs?
GEORGIA SIMPKIN: So, these are all from scouts and guides that
have come to camp and stay on the island all the way from
Australia to South America, so from all over the place.
JO DYSON: I love the fact that they're all unique.
SIAN LEWIS: Some from the 1990s and earlier so they're grown ups
now.
GEORGIA SIMPKIN: Absolutely and we do get them return as well.
SIAN LEWIS: How many scouts do you have here camping a year?
GEORGIA SIMPKIN: At the moment We've got over 1000 booked in
for this year. So it's just growing each year. So we've
actually got some scouts just around the corner that we can go
and meet at the trading post.
So this is Alex and Lucy who are part of LilIiput Sea scouts.
JO DYSON: Nice to meet you. So Sea scouts? not just any old
Scout!
ALEX: There's also land scouts and air scouts.
JO DYSON: The neckerchiefs around your neck, what's the
sort of knots around that?
ALEX: We've got a woggle land scouts and other scouts normally
have a leather one, but just because we're more affiliated
with the Sea, we've got a rope on which we tied ourselves.
JO DYSON: But Lucy, you've got, you've got something metal in
your woggle of your neckerchief.
LUCY: So this is the bosun's pipe.
JO DYSON: Can I hear what it sounds like?
LUCY: Yes, of course.
JO DYSON: Oh, that's brilliant.
SIAN LEWIS: And the colours of your neckerchief are your Scout
group?
ALEX: That's our Scout group so we've got red and white and red
and yellow, but other Scout groups have got different. So if
we have a look inside the trading post, whenever a Scout
group comes and camps on the island, they'll leave a
neckerchief as memorabilia.
So we've got some from Sri Lanka, some from Australia on
the roof. So there's hundreds of them just hanging.
JO DYSON: Oh my gosh. There are so many and there's so much
memorabilia as well around the shop. Look at all these
beautiful old photos.
LUCY: And here you're looking at the first Scout camp which
happened in 1907. Lord Baden-Powell came over to the
island for the first Scout experimental camp.
KEVIN PHILLIPS: The story starts a little bit earlier in 1900
Baden-Powell had returned from the siege of Mafeking. He was
very much a war hero. He'd already written a book on the
subject of scouting to use by non commissioned officers and
men.
I'm Kevin Phillips, chairman of the Brownsea Island Scout and
Guide heritage Trust.
While on a fishing holiday, he met Charles and Florence van
Raalte. They had a home in London and on Brownsea Island on
hearing about Baden-Powell's ideas, they invited him to use
their island for his experimental camp and so on the
first of August 1907, Baden-Powell brought 20 boys to
Brownsea.
He formed them into four patrols each with a patrol leader. And
then over the next 10 days, they were introduced to a range of
activities which would form the chapters of his planned book "
Scouting for Boys".
The association aims to provide fun, adventure, skills for life
and have the opportunity to reach their full potential.
Today, there are 57 million scouts in 175 national Scout
organizations worldwide.
JO DYSON: All these badges that you have - I noticed quite a few
sort of sailing boats on...
ALEX: When you're doing the activities in scouts, you often
get badges for it. So I've got a sailing badge, arts and crafts,
and pioneering. I quite like my navigation skill because it
means outside of scouts, there's no one there to support you when
you're on your own. I can go out with my friends, go camping and
I can navigate, and you feel safe because you know your
skills.
LUCY: I joined the sea scouts, not having many friends. Now,
I've got like lifetime friends forever.
JO DYSON: Too many friends.
SIAN LEWIS: It's amazing that you can still camp on the same
site today. Really cool.
LUCY: However, it used to be just for scouts and guides and
then after lockdown after we reopened again, they opened it
to the public.
JO DYSON: Oh, amazing, so we're about to have a very unique
experience!
ALEX: Enjoy your camp!
JO DYSON: Thank you so much.
Oh, it's a beautiful spot, Georgia. I love how it's
surrounded by trees, but then we're so close to the shoreline
as well.
GEORGIA SIMPKIN: So you'll probably notice we've got no
designated spots, so we don't have marked out pitches or
anything like that. As long as you leave a 6m distance between
yourself and any other tent, there's also really good beach
access from here so you can go off and have a swim in the
evening. If you see that flag pole over there? This actually
marks the spot where Baden-Powell pitched his first
experimental camp. so if you do want to, you can pitch in that
spot and you'll be reliving history.
JO DYSON: Great. Well, should we go and pitch our tent?
SIAN LEWIS: Yeah. Sounds brilliant.
GEORGIA SIMPKIN: Lovely, I'll say goodbye guys. Enjoy your
night.
JO DYSON: Thank you. Thanks, Georgia.
So how do we know where the perfect place to pitch is?
SIAN LEWIS: Yeah so normally what you're looking for is a
nice, generously sized, flattish area or on a very slight slope
if it is going to rain because then you know, the water's going
to drain away. And you want to avoid anything directly under a
tree or a rock face just in case anything wants to tumble down
onto your tent.
JO DYSON: I remember waking up on a slight incline once and
having the blood rush to my head, so if we are on a slight
slope-
SIAN LEWIS: yes head at the top of the slope!
JO DYSON: Right Sian so before we pitch, what sort of kit do we
always need on a camping trip?
SIAN LEWIS: So, obviously you do need some sort of tent. The real
basics that I think are, the real essentials are a nice comfy
sleeping bag. And you also need a camping mat that will keep you
better insulated if it's a bit chilly as well. You always want
to pack lots of water and then it's also really handy to have
some sort of little light for the evenings like a head torch.
JO DYSON: How do you know what sort of tent?
SIAN LEWIS: There is a big range so it is worth picking a tent
that suits the kind of camping you've got in mind. So you can
go from everything from a basic kind of little pop up tents
which are brilliant for festivals, then you can get
quite lightweight one and two man tents which are often called
backpacking tents, then you're looking at family friendly tents
and one technological innovation that's really helped with bigger
tents is air beam technology, which essentially means that
instead of big unwieldy metal poles, you're using air instead
to fill the poles of your tent. It actually makes for a really
sturdy, solid structure so it's going to be windproof and
weather proof as well. And that's what we're going to try
out today! So we've actually got Vango Brecon Air 450 air tent.
So I'm going to get it out and show you. You can inflate it
using a hand pump, which makes using a bigger tent a little bit
more accessible.
JO DYSON: Ok so I'm just rolling it out now.
SIAN LEWIS: That's definitely the ground sheet this darker
grey so if we lay that out flat, we'll see the shape of our tent.
JO DYSON: Oh, wow, this is huge.
SIAN LEWIS: It is.
So we've got the shape of our tent now so what we want to do
is peg out the four corners so it's nice and tight. And
something that I find really helps with that is, if we're at
opposite corners of the tent right now so if we pull those
corners tight and peg them out, it gives you a nice taut ground
sheet.
JO DYSON: Excellent idea.
It's like it's coming alive.
SIAN LEWIS: So you want to inflate it fully so it feels
nice and sturdy, it's getting there. And when you start to
feel resistance in the pump we'll stop.
JO DYSON: Yeah, I mean, I can now.
SIAN LEWIS: Brilliant. And then we'll do the next one.
JO DYSON: That probably only took a few seconds to blow up?
Didn't it? that one beam.
SIAN LEWIS: A lot of air tents only take 10 minutes. It's
definitely easier when you've done it once and you know what
you're doing.
Using guy ropes and pegs to secure the tent in place, makes
it much sturdier and is especially key if it's a really
windy day.
JO DYSON: Well, I think that's the last peg now, isn't it Sian?
SIAN LEWIS: Yeah, it was pretty quick. Well done.
JO DYSON: This is going to be such a memorable camping trip
for me, I mean, you must have so many memorable trips?
SIAN LEWIS: So probably the most memorable night I spent out in
the wild is doing something called Cliff camping.
JO DYSON: Cliff camping?
SIAN LEWIS: I don't know if you've ever seen any photos of
pro climbers where they'll climb a section of a big wall and then
they'll camp out on these little platforms which are called
Porter Ledges, which are literally hanging on to the
cliffside and you abseil down to a platform that's suspended from
the cliffs and you're harnessed in for the whole night and then
you just sleep out in the wild and you've got the Sea far below
you and you've got the wild birds kind of circling around
you and it is pretty scary, but also really magical.
JO DYSON: I mean did you actually get any sleep or were
you just petrified?
SIAN LEWIS: It's probably not much fun if you're really scared
of heights, but you do relax and as it gets dark it's, it's
actually surprisingly peaceful.
JO DYSON: Yeah, I can't imagine sleeping suspended in the air.
SIAN LEWIS: Well, actually I've got a little bit of a surprise
for you tonight! You're not actually going to join me in
this tent.
JO DYSON: Oh, right. You just got me to help you put it up.
SIAN LEWIS: I did because Brownsea Island offers something
slightly different, called a tree tent. And I thought you
might want to check that out tonight instead. Should we go
and have a look?
JO DYSON: Yes!
Oh my Gosh! I've never seen anything like it.
SIAN LEWIS: Yeah so what you've got is a triangular structure
that's pulled really tightly, kind of like slack lines if you
ever had a go on them? So they're attached to three trees
so you get a taut triangle and you can just see under here and
that basically becomes your ground sheet so that's what
you're going to sleep on. And if you give it a feel it's actually
pretty solid!
JO DYSON: Oh gosh it's really taut!
SIAN LEWIS: And then on top you have a traditional tent
structure, so it's a dome and this is your outer fly sheet,
which is going to keep you dry and then underneath you've got a
little bonus, you've got a little hammock to hang out in as
well.
JO DYSON: And I have a sea view from my hammock!
SIAN LEWIS: And a sea view!
JO DYSON: This is amazing. I mean, I, I will be sleeping
suspended what sort of a meter and a half in the air would you
say?
SIAN LEWIS: Yeah.
JO DYSON: Oh my gosh. I mean, this is an absolute first for
me.
SIAN LEWIS: Well, we'll call this Cliff camping for beginners
and you can see if you like it. So if you want to pop your stuff
inside the tent, now, we've got a few hours of downtime before
our next adventure, which is a night safari with the island
ranger. So maybe we could go for a little swim?
JO DYSON: I would absolutely love to go for a swim.
Sian, it's been such a brilliant day and actually it's just so
peaceful now, isn't it that all the day trippers to the island
have gone? And now it seems like it's pretty much just us and the
peacocks.
BEN BEACHAM: Hello.
JO DYSON: Oh, Ben! Great to meet you, I'm Jo.
SIAN LEWIS: I'm Sian. Nice to meet you.
BEN BEACHAM: You too. So, the plan this evening, we're gonna
go and see if we can look for some nightjar. I think we're
gonna start, we'll just have a look around some of the habitats
we've got on the island and then we'll see what we can see on the
way.
JO DYSON: Wonderful.
BEN BEACHAM: Let's go.
JO DYSON: So, Ben, it's a different sort of landscape up
here slightly, isn't it?
BEN BEACHAM: So, the island's predominantly woodland, so it's
pine woodland. We've got Scots and maritime pine and then we've
got the area that we're just coming up to now is our sort of
only bit of open heath.
JO DYSON: This is so beautiful.
BEN BEACHAM: So, at the moment we've got the, the bell heathers
just coming into flower.
JO DYSON: It's a really bright, vivid purple, isn't it?
SIAN LEWIS: So, is this quite rare heathland?
BEN BEACHAM: Yeah. So, in Dorset over the last couple of
centuries we've lost up to sort of 80% of our heathland. So, the
bits that we do have are very important and because we have
the squirrels on the island rather than reverting everything
to heathland, we're reversing it to wooded heath.
SIAN LEWIS: Can you tell us more about the red squirrels on
Brownsea? Because it's something quite special about the island,
isn't it?
BEN BEACHAM: Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's, one of only two places in
Southern England that you can find them. So here and in the
Isle Of Wight. But, yeah, we've got a population of between 200
to 250. We're very happy that they're here.
Yeah, this area where we're stood now actually is probably
richest area for sort of rare species. Last year we had a pair
of Dartford Warbler nesting in a patch of gorse just over there.
We also have sand lizards. So the males are bright green this
time of year and they bathe in the sun on the edge of the path.
So, we're going to go and see if we can look for some nightjar.
I don't know whether you know much about nightjar?
SIAN LEWIS: No I don't!
BEN BEACHAM: So they're a very difficult bird to see during the
daytime. They're ground nesters and they're cryptically
camouflaged. So they look like bark, so they look like a tree
or the ground. So the only really easy way to, to find them
is listening for their calls. And that their calls are
mechanical, it doesn't sound like any other type of bird. It
sounds possibly more like a frog or something like that. So,
yeah, you'll definitely know what it is when you, when you
hear it.
JO DYSON: What was that?
BEN BEACHAM: There's a nightjar. Can you hear? There it is, over
here somewhere. There, there it is!
So the, the songs are territorial. They're attracting
a mate and they're warding off other males and then they will
come out and they will display and then they'll probably go off
and start foraging.
JO DYSON: And when you say they do a display, what does that
look like?
BEN BEACHAM: So, the males have, white tips to the end of their
wings and the, the end of their tail feathers and they fly,
they'll fly around the territory trying to attract a mate. They
clap their wings sort of above their head. Makes quite a loud
noise.
Yeah, there's one.
So he's definitely come to have a look at us there.
SIAN LEWIS: His movements so interesting. It's like an
animatronic bird.
BEN BEACHAM: Like a string puppet.
SIAN LEWIS: Yeah exactly!
BEN BEACHAM: So if you put your hands like next to your ears it,
it'll amplify the sound.
JO DYSON: It does.
BEN BEACHAM: Yeah, looks cool as well, doesn't it?
JO DYSON: Oh, yeah.
BEN BEACHAM: So, yeah, I think we might leave them to it now.
SIAN LEWIS: It was really special.
JO DYSON: Right. So, we head back to the campsite then?
SIAN LEWIS: Yeah.
JO DYSON: What a view! That is just beautiful. Looking up
through the trees that my tent has been tied to and beyond the
branches, I can see the sea. This is such a serene place to
wake up to.
Let's see what Sian's up to.
Morning Sian! That smells delicious!
SIAN LEWIS: Yeah, I've got some coffee on the go and I'm making
us some breakfast. I'm doing some porridge and some
caramelized nuts to go on top.
JO DYSON: Oh, my gosh, that sounds incredible.
SIAN LEWIS: How did you sleep?
JO DYSON: Surprisingly well! Actually, once I've managed to
climb into the tree tent, I felt really quite supported. And
actually the hammock feeling just sort of makes you feel
cocooned.
SIAN LEWIS: Was it nice to wake up on the peaceful island?
JO DYSON: It was, it just feels that we're a million miles away
from the mainland.
SIAN LEWIS: It is such a wonderful place to be. And I
think, you know, you only have to be here for a day or two and
you really relax because there's no cars. It's a haven for
nature. It just feels like a really special place to escape
to.
JO DYSON: Where should we go for our next wild escape?
SIAN LEWIS: Should we graduate to Cliff camping next?
JO DYSON: I don't know about that! One step at a time.
Thank you for listening to the National Trust podcast. If you'd
like to book a stay on Brownsea Island, there's information in
this episode's show notes along with a link to the Wild Escapes
book where you can read about other amazing places to stay.
For now from me, Jo Dyson, goodbye.