This blog is moving!

This blog is now moving on to the new Nearly Wild Camping website. Unfortunately we cannot automatically move everyone who is subscribed to this blog over to the new one, but if you go on over and sign up to our newsletter or follow us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/nearlywildcamping) or twitter @nearlywildcamp then you will still be able to find out what is going on.

We aren’t going to be posting any more posts on this blog after the one as we are moving on to pastures new and we very much hope you will come with us!

Crowd funding project now live

Our crowdfunding project is now live. Please support us in spreading the word about growing our network of locations offering Nearly Wild experiences. We need to get off to a flying start and you are the people who can help us do that. And we have lots of great rewards up for grabs, how would you like to receive an original Steve Evison sketch for £50?

Why co-operate? Because everyone benefits

Nearly Wild Camping’s a co-operative because everyone benefits from being involved – locations and campers

When we were deciding what business structure to use for Nearly Wild Camping, Steve had an epiphany moment when he realised that it should be a co-operative. That’s because it isn’t just about a couple of people running a website, if it was then it really wouldn’t be very interesting. It is about all of the Nearly Wild locations working together and supporting each other to make Nearly Wild Camping work for them, including group discounts and sharing good advice and giving the campers amazing experiences.

It is also about the Nearly Wild Campers being able to review the locations, suggest improvements to how it runs and supporting the location owners to make a living from their little bit of wild. We are just the intermediaries and any money coming our way is for running the services for everyone’s benefit, such as the website.

Also the collective genius of all our members is going to make a much better service than anything we could come up with on our own!

Meet Nearly Wild Camping’s parent… Nearly Wild CIC

Although legally Nearly Wild Camping co-op is a separate organisation legally it grew up through and is still tightly linked to Nearly Wild Community Interest Company. So we thought you might like to be introduced…

Nearly Wild CIC is quite a young parent, having only been established this time last year with the mission of encouraging exploration of the world that surrounds us and our approach to this is trying out innovative and fun ways of helping people have wilder experiences. And so Nearly Wild Camping is the first initiative in hopefully a long line of exciting projects that grow in the Nearly Wild fertile soils!

I think an idea that might see some action this year is ‘journeys through time, place and processes’, such as the pots that we make from the clay soil at Underhill farm or a foraging canoe safari… Nearly Wild has it’s own website, newsletter and blog if you wanted to find out what it’s up to.

http://www.nearlywild.org

All trained to use new website

New website training today

All trained on how to use our wonderful new website now, thanks to Patrick at Moghill Web Services (www.moghill.co.uk). Just need to make the last few changes to wording and a few other tweaks and then it will be live and ready for your viewing pleasure!

Who would have thought that so much goes on behind the scenes of a website. Moghill have been absolute stars, listening to our rambling descriptions of what we are after and turning them into a wonderful website and being incredibly patient with all of our ‘oh and…’

We would definitely recommend them to anyone looking to get their website designed and you can all judge for yourselves in a few days time when it goes live! Exciting!

What about an original sketch as a reward?

Alongside all of his other activities Steve, co-founder of Nearly Wild Camping, still finds the time to sit down with his sketch book and explore the world around him with his pen. We are planning on offering four originals as rewards and we reckon they will be popular.

Other ideas on the cards are Nearly Wild Camping badges and an all expenses paid camping trip to review a Nearly Wild location for us. Just in the process of finalising the rewards now, so still just about time to get any requests in.

What rewards would you like?

What rewards would you like in our crowdfunding campaign? We are still open for suggestions to make it even better!

The way it will work is that for each level of supporter (eg, £5, £25 etc) there will be different rewards available as a thank you. So now’s your chance before it is all finalised to suggests the rewards that you would like to get.

We are crowd funding from early April

We are crowd funding from early April to help us launch Nearly Wild Camping – so watch this space.

We have a plan and oh so nearly have a website and an actual official Nearly Wild Camping co-operative and so now we just need to tell everyone about it! We can do a little bit with the remainder of the interest free loan from the Evisons and all of our goodwill and enthusiasm, but our resources are running pretty low. So in order to get this off the ground we asking for everyone’s help. We are hoping to raise £3,300 through a crowdfunding campaign to pay for us to go to the smallholders show and others and to get some proper promotional material made. We really need to get the word out about Nearly Wild Camping because the more Nearly Wild locations there are and the more people there are visiting them this year the more awesome it will be.

And you are our key players, as people already in the know we are counting on you to help us get the Crowdfunding campaign off to a flying start. And as a thank you we have devised lots of exciting rewards that supporters can get.

Thank you so much for your support already through all of the long birthing process and I can’t wait to make this happen together.

Nearly Wild Camping co-op is now official

Nearly Wild Camping co-op is now official! Well nearly, we signed the papers today, so once they come back from the regulators we can officially start signing up members. How exciting!

We have spent the last couple of months talking to Dave Hollings from Co-operative and Mutual solutions ltd http://www.cms.coop about the best structure for a Nearly Wild Camping co-operative. It has been a very interesting and informative process, funded by the cooperative group, and has really helped us iron out the details. And today was the big day where we made it official and signed the company papers. So by the middle of April we will be an official co-operative of Nearly Wild campers, locations and supporters, just the thought of all of the potential things we could create together makes me want to jump up and down!

Exciting new beginnings for the New Year

After a busy period of reflection, planning, designing and writing funding bids, we had a marvellous Christmas present of funding from Powys Sustainable Tourism to get a new website made which will allow you to view all the location profiles and to book online. Very exciting and a busy January ahead sorting it out.

And as if that is not enough we have also got free support and advice from experts on co-operatives thanks to the Co-operative group, who are going to help us set up Nearly Wild Camping as a co-op. After lots of thinking we realised that this structure was the best one for us, particularly as it lets everyone be an active part of it. I can’t wait to see what final membership options we decide on, there is so much potential!

Right enough excitement for now. Thank you for your interest, support and enthusiasm in 2013 and we very much look forward to sharing the Nearly Wild adventures of 2014 with you.