Rise and shine, it's rush hour: a night on a commuter campsite

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10 April 2012

The Monday morning commuter rush at Lee Valley, in north-east London, starts early — at 4am. From that ungodly hour, people can be glimpsed hurriedly pacing across dewy grass in the pre-dawn gloom. Some wear the high-visibility chartreuse tabards favoured by council workers. Some are clad in immaculate white shirt and tie. Others wear hoodies and a few still have driblets of shaving foam on their cheeks.

But these London workers aren't emerging from neat suburban homes. The only morning paper they'll see en route to the station is the loo roll in the communal shower blocks. And forget a skinny soya latte — they're much more likely to be clutching a tent peg instead.

While it can't be compared to the gridlock at Victoria or the mass of bodies waiting to board the 7.42 to Liverpool Street, the Lee Valley tent-set represent a recent — and burgeoning — phenomenon. These commuters have struck upon a radical way to beat London's soaring rental prices: bedding down in tents, caravans and mobile homes on the edge of the City.

"We've definitely noticed an upturn since the recession," says Rick Garvey, manager of Lee Valley leisure complex, which currently has about "40 long-term residents" living at its Edmonton site (there is a second site in nearby Chingford), paying between £12.30 and £16.40 a night for a one-person pitch (hiring an "electricity pod" costs £3.60 a day and many tents have TV aerials attached plus a mass of wires). It is not just the prices that are very un-London. Looking at the "facilities", the shop and shower block — all housed in faux-Alpine huts with pretty hanging baskets — and ignoring the pylons and occasional waft of sewage (thanks, Deephams Sewage Works), this feels like being in the middle of the country.

The existence of the "campmuter" came to light thanks to Philip Hanman, the benefit frauds investigator who lived in a £30 Lidl tent at an Epping Forest campsite. He acquired folk-hero status during the expenses scandal after it was disclosed that Andrew George, his local MP in Cornwall (where Hanman travelled back to at weekends), owned a £300,000 taxpayer-subsidised house in Rotherhithe. This month Hanman was forced out of his job at Barking and Dagenham council after his bosses objected to him talking about his Nuts in May-style life.

At Lee Valley, there are more atypical commuters, such as 18-year-old Sam Thurgood, interning at a City bank but staying in his parents' caravan, or the London cabbie who parks his Hackney carriage next to his motor home. Meanwhile, 28-year-old Teessider Steve Dunn travels to Oxford Street every day to work in John Lewis. Why? "My girlfriend and I tried to buy a house but it fell through."

But contractors form the bulk of the long-term lodgers, many of whom work on the 2012 Olympic site. Mooch around and you'll bump into people like amiable Midlands decorator Ron O'Grady ("There's nothing bad about it here") or the three Middlesbrough joiners who shell out £180 a week for a shared caravan but talk of "missing the wife and kids". They're here for anything from one night to seven months, with most travelling back to their "real" homes at weekends. Staggeringly, some contractors stayed in tents here during February's snowy spell — and braved last weekend's torrential rain.

Then there's Lucy Boggis. Living in a deluxe caravan decked out like a surf shack (think straw blinds, seashells and lots of pink), 22-year-old Boggis is better-known as "Tempest" in Sky1's Gladiators. She's now training for the 2012 Olympics where she hopes to represent Britain in the heptathlon. With Lottery funding non-forthcoming, she moved to Lee Valley last September, as it's next door to an athletics centre.

"I pay £400 a month here, but everything is included, such as electricity and water," she says. "All my mates call me The Traveller' but I've got my own shower, toilet and kitchen, which is more than I'd get if I was renting a room. People who walk in are like, This is better than a studio flat'."

With the average cost of renting a single room in London £676 a month, it's no surprise that money is the main reason why so many commuters bunk down at Lee Valley. In London, a shortage of homes is pushing rents higher, with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors announcing in May that 30 per cent more of its members reported rising rents in the three months to April.

Travel also plays a factor. Ponders End (Lee Valley's closest station) is only 20 minutes away from Liverpool Street, making it ideal for a City commute. Sitting outside his caravan supping beer in the evening sun as if he's poolside in Puerto Banús, one fiftysomething construction worker (who declined to be named, possibly because of what happened to Hanman) explains: "I've got a house in Brighton but this job has long shifts. It takes hours for me to get home, so my wife stays there during the week while I'm here."

It's not just Lee Valley. The Caravan Club site in Crystal Palace and Loughton's Debden House (near the Central line) have both hosted commuters too.

It has been suggested in some quarters that camping has become a luxurious and hip pursuit — "glamping" if you will. This is, of course, patent rubbish.

At the back of the site, we spy one contractor having a shave in the wing mirror of a car. The floor of the cooped-up tent he shares with three lads is strewn with detritus such as an empty Smirnoff bottle and half-eaten plates of food.
Glamorous it is not. But forget clichés about baked beans cooked on gas stoves — many long-term tent-dwellers have barbecues, mini-fridges and blow-up sofas.

It might be because there is nothing to do here, but at Lee Valley, everybody goes to bed early. Although there's a multiplex cinema next door, the nearest pub and gym are both car rides away and the only concession to a social life seems to be a forlorn-looking ping-pong table. Come 9pm, tent lamps flicker out and the only sounds to be heard are men snoring and Police, Camera, Action! blaring from TV sets.

Except, that is, if you're billeted near one group of electrical contractors from Leicester. On arriving home around 6.30pm, they set up a Godfather-style feast on an adjoining picnic table. The waft of barbecued sausages replaces the sewage stench. An acceptable bottle of cabernet sauvignon is on the go. Football is on the telly and it's not long before chaps are swigging rosé straight from the bottle. Your correspondent has been to shabbier stag parties than this.

"We have a drink like this every night, especially if the weather's all right," says one of them. "But it's a weird combination — contractors mixing with people on holiday." Being surrounded by map-clutching Italian tourists and vacationing Dutch families has clearly rubbed off some holiday joie de vivre on these seven twentysomethings. It's like Auf Wiedersehen Pet with air mattresses.

But surely the point of coming home after work is that it's a refuge from your workmates; a chance to unwind and bitch about them until your poisonous heart is content? You can't do that if their feet are wedged near your head for eight hours every night.

Privacy also appears to be a problem, with gossamer-thin canvas meaning that everybody can hear your conversations. Without deliberately eavesdropping, the Evening Standard heard one chap tell his girlfriend on the mobile how much he loves her, a man admit he has "problems I can't talk to anyone else about", and another warn his colleague "not to spoon" him again in the night (he might have been joking).

With the campsite blanketed in darkness, thoughts inevitably turn to security. The Lee Valley campsite is surrounded by warehouses, industrial wasteland and a reservoir. Do campers spend every night petrified of intruders?

"My mum and dad obviously worried about me living in a caravan," says Boggis. "But Lee Valley has security patrolling the site every hour. I haven't worried once."

Indeed, Garvey points out, "the site is locked down with a permanent barrier so there's no access after 10pm. We also have a company called Parkguard at the end of the phone, who have powers of arrest."

As rain pitter-patters on the canvas, Lee Valley's residents drift into sleep. For a moment, you sense that commuters like this quasi-rural nirvana because it's far more relaxing than suburban life could ever be.

But at 4am, you're promptly awoken by a cacophonous dawn chorus. Bleeping mobile alarms, squawking geese, ambulance sirens, dogs barking, babies screaming — all human (and animal) life is here.

It raises a pertinent point: why bother living like a homeless person in a field when you can kip in a cheap hotel room, laying waste to the complimentary shortbread? Nearby guesthouses offer rooms from £88 a week (£44 a week sharing) while room rental specialist mondayto-friday has a room in a house in neighbouring Walthamstow that costs £380 a month. Both cheaper than hiring a caravan during high season.

Some commuters say they prefer the "outdoors-ness" of Lee Valley, others express a dislike for "soulless" hotel rooms, while for some, like Boggis, caravan life suits their ascetic, work-hard lifestyles: "I normally get in from the track late, make some food, then get ready to rise early the next day."

By 8am, Lee Valley's "campmuters" are either at work or hauling their sore necks and campsite tiredness onto the Tube.

On Friday night, most of them will be heading family-wards, but some — including our refusing-to-be-named fiftysomething contractor —will be staying put. "My wife's coming up for the weekend," he says. "The beauty of Lee Valley is that I can sit here and feel miles away from my job. The last place I'd want to be is a bedsit near my Stratford workplace.

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Rise and shine, it's rush hour: a night on a commuter campsite

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