Wild with Consent founder Grace Fell
One woman's journey from rural Northumberland to an expanding national business plus all the eco news updates
Good morning! I’m Sarah Hartley and this is The Northern Eco weekly update. As you’ve received this newsletter then, either you subscribed, or someone forwarded it to you. If the latter, then you can click on this handy little button below.
We’re starting today’s newsletter with a special feature as part of the ‘lunch with..….’ series where I get to sit down with interesting people for an unhurried interview in a local eaterie of their choice. Today it’s entrepreneur Grace Fell.
Grace Fell is one of those fortunate people who has made her own luck by turning her passion into a business. She’s always loved the outdoors and being with nature after a childhood spent in rural Northumberland. But entering the leisure industry didn’t look like the most obvious career pathway for the economics graduate who started out in product management for a London company.
So where did the camping business without being a landowner originate? It was coping with the Covid pandemic restrictions which set the path for the launch of Wild With Consent. Looking for somewhere quiet and private to take a campervan for a break proved to be more difficult than it sounded and led to the idea.
“ We were looking for somewhere with a nice view and no other caravans but we didn’t want to suddenly be moved on or woken up in the middle of the night by an angry farmer because we’d parked in a wrong place.
“ That was three years ago. In the summer 2021, I started with 12 sites in Northumberland and now we have 95.”
Time for food
Grace and I were chatting over lunch at The Claypath Deli in Durham. She chose this local deli/bakery for our meeting as it’s a regular stop for her near the city centre home she shares with her partner, an academic at the city’s University
While I take a look at the menu (what exactly is ‘Georgian street food’, I wonder?) Grace tells me more about the business - a sort of AirBnB for wild campers where campers can search for locations offered.
Every one of the sites offered to campers is personally inspected by Grace before being added to the online platform where motorhome drivers can then book a place for their sole use for a night or few. This gives campers a very different experience from the large sites commonly on offer.
“The aim is to help more people access nature but in a way that’s organised and easy for them. People also often see at firsthand the working of a farm or feel closer to the local community they’re visiting - more than they might on a large campsite.”
On the menu
Our food arrives and it turns out the Georgian street food, or khachapuri, looks quite a lot like pizza. Fantastic bread with courgettes and olives scattered but I did swerve the offered egg on top. Grace’s deli sandwich looks as you’d expect. I can see why this place has earned a faithful local support with the top quality baking on offer, unfussy decor and a friendly casual atmosphere.
Building the business
I first met Grace when we were both part of the Ignite North East PreAccelerator 2024 cohort. She concentrated on Wild With Consent while I was developing a matchmaking platform for organisations to be paired with media. This was our first chance to catch up since we completed that programme so I was keen to hear how things were developing.
Grace tells me she’ll hit her 100 camping sites target this year and is receiving good feedback:
“I think people love the privacy and the peace and quiet and it's that guarantee that you're going to be in a nice place. Because people have the whole space to theselves, we’re getting a lot of feedback from people with kids who found it a really nice environment to spend time. Wildlife often comes much closer than normal because it's much quieter and they're not used to seeing people so it's very much their space.
“We also have a lot of people who visit with dogs. Which is fine because most of our sites accept dogs and it's actually really nice that they can relax, knowing their dog’s, not annoying other people. The privacy in the space there just makes it quite relaxing.“
With life on the open road now increasing in popularity - a reported one in five Brits are already planning a motorhome or caravan holiday over the next 12 months - it sounds like green lights all the way for Wild with Consent’s next stage of the journey.
Our lunch, accompanied by a flat white and and a green tea came to £23.90.
The online platform is available for bookings and enquiries at www.wildwithconsent.com.
Paid subscribers can access more ‘lunch with’…interviews here.
The three most clicked links from last week were:
Britain’s broken water system: A history of death, denial and diarrhoea
In other news
🛤️ Train company LNER has unveiled its first ‘Carbon Saving Departures Board’ – a new initiative designed to demystify carbon jargon and help passengers to make more sustainable travel choices this summer. Danny Longhorn at Rail Business Today reports.
🦋 Where are all the butterflies? Possibly in your shed says Willow Neal at The Conversation who writes about how the insects should ideally be in woodlands or hedges, but they’re also common in sheds and can even be found in a bedroom cupboard.
🦋 Conservation group Make it Wild say a North Yorkshire wildlife habitat has seen a nearly 700 per cent increase in ‘prolific pollinators’, including extremely rare species for the county. Kevin Glenton at the York Press reports.
🌞 A proposal for a large-scale solar farm should be rejected due to its “cumulative landscape impact” while a similar scheme about 2.5km away should be approved as a single carriageway road and a railway line serve as “visual barriers”, Stuart Minting reports for the D&S.
🌿 A ‘floating ecosystem’ designed to create a habitat for wildlife on the River Ouse could be coming to the centre of York under new plans writes Joe Gerrard at The Yorkshire Post.
🏭 The Drax power station near Selby has been named as the UK’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, reports Darren Greenwood at the York Press.
🏭 Meanwhile, Brendan Montague writes at The Ecologist how a climate camp protest against the Drax power station planned for last weekend was cancelled at the last minute after 27 activists were arrested and equipment including tents, cooking equipment, toilets and track for wheelchairs were seized.
👗 “The future of fashion is going to be second-hand, regardless of whether it’s vintage or second-hand, because we can’t keep going on the way we are with fast fashion.”
Laura Jackson, owner of Newcastle-based vintage store Friday Vintage speaks to Kate Hewison at NET.
River news latest
💦 As app/website readers will already be aware, just after we published last week’s newsletter Ofwat announced that Thames Water, Yorkshire Water and Northumbrian Water face £168m fines by the industry regulator over historic sewage spills. The next stage of that is a period of public consultation:
To take part in the Yorkshire Water consultation, click here.
To take part in the Northumbrian Water consultation, click here.
But of course, imposing large fines doesn’t mean the rivers are going to be any cleaner in the short term as Sandra Laville at The Guardian points out in this thoughtful piece.
“Behind the record fines announced by Ofwat for the routine dumping of sewage into rivers and seas by three water companies, there is a voiceless victim, one that does not sit in boardrooms, or get a chance to count dividends. It is our rivers and coastal waters, subjected to years of continuous pollution under the noses of the regulators, which are suffering.”
💦 The government yesterday also launched a consultation to double reimbursement for water company customers when their basic water services are hit.
💦 As part of its corporate volunteering programme, Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust (YDRT) hosted some of the cast and crew of ITV 1’s Emmerdale. The hands-on day in the Washburn Valley near Harrogate was a chance to learn more about what’s involved in protecting rivers and steams from invasive non-native species (INNS) and why this is important to catchment health. YDRT reports here.
💦 North Shields artist Olly Armstrong is collecting people’s memories, stories and feelings about the River Tyne for his latest project, A River’s Lament. They could be about working or playing, fun or sorrow, how the river makes people think or feel, and how the river has played a part in their life and relationships. North Tyneside Council explains more.
💦 Derwent Reservoir in County Durham has been named as one of Britain’s 20 best wild swimming spots by Jack Hudson at The Telegraph.
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