Duchyland

"I accept my invitation to visit you. I'll arrive on foot and stay in a tiny green tent."

Fresh from a summer carrying buckets of human faeces for a Lord and Lady, Mark Walters watched a hedge fund manager persuade the High Court to ban wild camping on Dartmoor — the last 0.2% of England where it was still legal.

Walters decided he'd had enough.

The aristocracy owns about a quarter of England — an area the size of Belgium. Not because anyone earned it: because a Norman warlord carved the place up for his mates in 1066, because Henry VIII robbed the monasteries and handed the proceeds to his drinking partners, and because Charles II scattered dukedoms among his illegitimate sons ... Somebody's mate, or somebody's mistake.

So, Walters emailed the King, the future King, and a fistful of dukes to tell them he was coming to camp on their land. Then he went. His kit: a little tent, a bottle of Bleu de Chanel, and a law degree from a top-114-ranked university ... He slept uninvited across Duchyland: dodging bogs on the King's Lancashire estate, strolling up the Duke of Westminster's drive while he was away at the coronation, ducking binocular-wielding rangers at Woburn Abbey, and crossing the Grimpen Mire — in the rain, in skinny jeans — to spend a night on the moor where the fight began.

Nobody stops him. That turns out to be the whole point. The PRIVATE — KEEP OUT signs are mostly bluff, and trespass in England isn't the crime you think it is.

Duchyland is gonzo journalism in Chelsea boots: rude, precise, very funny, and a serious argument wearing a piss-take as a disguise. Who said this land was theirs? And what happens if we all simply walk in?