You are reading a single comment by @ewanmac and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@ewanmac
I came to post this, fascinating.
I've been intrigued by this idea for a while but never looked into it but over the last couple of years I've been doing quite a lot of trail running and the more I ran off road the more permenant/semi permanent camps I've stumbled across. Most are on the fringes of town (I live on the outskirts of Oxford) but I've come across others further afield too.
The most interesting was a small trail I followed down from the ring road in an attempt to get to and follow the river but I stumbled across a bicycle graveyard and then further on a smouldering campfire and finally a collection of shanty huts constructed from rubbish (one had a guitar built into the wall). I turned back and when I was looking for an alternative route A guy emerged with armfuls of wood for the fire and told me there wasn't any way through and that "this is campfire country down here". There is another clearly semi-permentant village of tents on Osney Meadow.
At first I had written off many of these camps (under bridges and around pillboxes etc) as rubbish left by tramps/drunks/druggies but the example above made me think a bit more - who are these people and why do they live like that? Is it by choice (I can partially see the appeal) or are they people forced out of society by circumstances and making the best of a bad lot?
The whole thing fascinates me.