Hiker shares sickening scene captured at illegal campsite along route: 'It makes my blood boil'

A hiker shared their outrage after coming across a litter-filled, illegal wild camping site at a Welsh national park.

The hiker posted a photo of the site on the r/wildcampingintheuk Reddit forum. It showed several trash bags, plus loose bottles, cans, and other garbage left in a makeshift camping site at Brecon Beacons National Park in Wales.

"This is why wild camping is illegal," the original poster wrote.

Wild camping, where people camp outside of designated campgrounds, is illegal in the United Kingdom's national parks and on any other land without first obtaining the owners' permission.

That doesn't stop many people from partaking in the practice, as it can let them experience nature in powerful ways. However, too often, people don't treat the land with respect, leaving it much worse than they found it.

In one part of England, homeowners have to spend time weekly picking up after wild campers, who treat the grounds "like a festival" and leave huge messes behind.

"I think we have a major issue with littering," one commenter wrote. "I'm seeing a lot of it this year. It makes my blood boil."

Sure enough, littering is a major problem in the U.K., with research indicating that more than 2 million pieces of trash are littered in the country every day.

But it's not just the U.K. that has this problem. In the United States, it is estimated that there are 50 billion pieces of litter along roads and in waterways. Plastic litter in particular is one of the world's biggest environmental concerns, with more than 170 trillion pieces of plastic believed to be in our oceans.

Some within the U.K. have tried to find ways to encourage responsible wild camping. Rewilding Britain, a nature-recovery organization, has helped open previously unpermitted areas to camping, with campers encouraged to get involved in conservation efforts.

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But until more programs like that exist, wild camping remains illegal in the country. And thanks to the amount of litter left behind in places such as Brecon Beacons, Redditors don't expect that to change anytime soon.

"Spoils it for the rest of us," one commenter wrote. "People found doing this should be banned from national parks."

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