Where's the oddest place you've camped wild?

I remember camping in a graveyard in England, for instance

And once, in Turkey, we were found by a man on a moped who seemed as amused as he was concerned by where we were. When we made no sense to each other, he came back with someone who spoke something other than Turkish. And after understanding a couple of words in German, we grasped that we were not in a park, as we'd thought at dusk, but at the unused end of a cemetery. With a flash of his torch, he showed us the stones further up the slope. That's why they'd been so amused.

I can't think of other odd places for the moment, but perhaps you can

So why not tell us where, and what led to it?

Nothing too strange in terms of places camped, but just to pass comment on your choices - surely this makes you a very grave man? 

Credit Shakespeare for the joke, btw. I'm not very original ;)

I too have camped in a graveyard - but it seems like a lifetime ago.  In fact, it was about 43 years ago - I was touring in the Ozark mountains in Arkansas - it was very uncommon to see a bicycle tourist in Arkansas in those days, and to be honest it was a bit risky as I had experienced a beer bottle hurled at me from a passing pickup - it was getting dark, I had just gotten some food at a small town store right before they closed, and I desperately needed somewhere to camp - I recalled passing by a small cemetery right before entering town, and I hurriedly cycled back there as I was losing daylight and I had no lights.  This was a heavily forested area and I secluded myself out-of-sight as well as I could in the rear of the cemetery and thought I was well hidden from anyone who might pass by on the road.  And indeed I was - but I didn't count on illegal poachers showing up that night!   A pickup truck entered the graveyard late that night with a spotlight mounted - they were practicing what is known as "spotlighting" which means to temporarily bedazzle a deer with a bright light and cause them to freeze up a few seconds so that the poachers could shoot them.  

I think they were as startled by my presence as I was by theirs - and I know they were shocked that anyone would be camping in the graveyard!  They left once they spotted me and I was glad of it.  So far, that has been my only experience at graveyard camping - but in the right circumstances I would do it again - I'm certain the graveyard occupants don't mind the company!  

Buddy Hall

I know your concern. One night in Turkey, alone this time, I camped in a field of long grass. I was just getting to sleep when I heard a gun shot. I've heard guns in the day, usually at wild pigs or rabbits, but night-time shots were different, and when I was camping out of sight in the field where they were being fired they weredifferent again.

Perhaps a night slaughter of rabbits was in progress.

A delay and then another bang, another pause, another bang.

I was torn between shining a light to keep myself from being shot, at the risk of being turned out, and not shining it so that I could stay. You'd think the choice would be obvious - stay alive - but priorities are different when your dead-beat from cycling.

I listened and the shots kept coming, but nobody approached. In the end, a tribute to my tiredness, I fell asleep for the rest of the night.

The shots were still there in the morning. I peeped out of the tent and there was nobody.

And then the truth came to me: I'd felt in deadly danger from a bird-scarer.

Léo I can recall a scariest, a wettest and a most amusing slumber location, but  no really odd places. Each of these were places where I slept under the open night sky without a tent. 

The scariest was a beach near Haifa in Israel where I was awoken about 2am staring rabbit-like into a spotlight and the barrel of a jeep mounted machine gun. It was my first night in Israel and an introduction to the twitchiness of the Israel Defence Force. Unlike Greece and Italy, Israel doesn’t want cycle tourists sleeping on their beaches. They confuse tourists with terrorists. 

The most amusing was also a beach. On the west coast of Italy. I awoke and reached for my shoes which, when sleeping rough, I habitually placed a meter or so from my head. I was slightly alarmed to find only one shoe. The dawn light revealed the other shoe was now in the possession of a cheerful looking dog about 10 metres away. He was waiting for me to wake up and play fetch. In took me about 15 minutes to convince him to stop running with the shoe and drop it. The problem of course was that I didn’t know how to yell, “Drop It!” in Italian.

The wettest was in the semi-arid Mallee region of South Australia. Never sleep on green grass in that region. The usual reason the grass is green is because of  industrial scale irrigation systems which pop out of the ground at 2.30 am with water jets forceful enough to roll hapless, ground sleeping  cycle tourists. 

What led to each of these? Naivety and poor observation in the twilight which is when this cycle tourer starts to look for a camp site.

I think the oddest things that have happened to me while bike camping have occurred in established city, state, and national forest campgrounds.  Wild camping, on the other hand, has been pretty tame other than the normal sounds of animals creeping around and twigs falling on my tent.

Once in South Dakota's Black Hills, I had to escape my route due to lightning and I set up my tent in a raging storm.  I was soaking wet when I finally crawled in. 

The next morning was bright and beautiful, and there were three cows checking me out from behind a barbed wire fence a few yards away.

The first thing that comes to mind is pretty tame but seemed more significant at the time.  About 35 years ago I landed in Cedar City at the start of a ride to Flagstaff via Bryce, Zion and the Grand Canyon.  The flight arrived after 10, a tiny prop Metroliner arriving at a then tiny airport.  The pilot started to close the baggage bays with my bike still in it, preparing to fly off with it to Saint George.  By the time I managed to get his atention, retrieve my bike and unbox it, it was black out so I just rolled my sleeping bag out on the lawn by the FAA office.  A few hours later a thunderstorm passed through, so I hurriedly unpacked my rain fly and blanketed myself.  Two hours later the sprinkler system came on, so I hurriedly relocated myself into the adjacent sagebrush and squirmed around uncomfortably there until  it was light and late enough to bike into town for coffee.

Scott this sagebrush story is a great example of why cycle touring is never going to be a mass tourism phenomenon. We are safe from being crowded out of such salubrious, prickly campsites by baby boomer travellers such as ourselves who are now deprived of luxury ocean cruises and are seeking other travel choices. 

Emmet one of my most favourite authors (other than Léo), your brilliant countryman Spike Milligan (who now rests eternally here in Australia) would appreciate your post.

In one of his entertaining books, Spike tells the story of a relative who, after a long period of unemployment, won a job where he had several thousand people under him. It sounded like a massive supervisory challenge until he revealed his job was mowing lawns at the local cemetery.

My very first multiday bike ride (and first century ride) was when I was 12 years old and I and some friends somehow found out one summer that Montauk Point (on the eastern end of Long Island NY) was 100 miles from where we lived in Freeport NY. That sounded like a cool bike ride. Another friend's family was camping at Hither Hills State Park and he said we could stay at their site when we got there.

Back then it was pretty easy to convince parents to let you do crazy things like this, so we put some Pop Tarts inside our Boy Scout sleeping bags, bungies corded them to our ragtag bikes and started out to ride east (without water bottles, pumps, patch kits or anything else) mostly on pretty busy Sunrise Highway. We had no maps - it was pretty much stay on Sunrise Highway (with a few name changes) until it ended at what we imagined were big sand dunes, or we actually saw Hither Hills State Park.

We stopped for lunch at a place that had an outdoor go-kart track and spent all our money there. At about the 75 mile mark we realized 100 miles was a long way, but just as it was getting dark we slowly pedaled up to the entrance to Hither Hills State Park asked the guy at the entrance what site the Dodge family was at. He sneered at us and said "There are hundreds of campsites - we just take the money, we don't look into their family trees."

We biked around for an hour so asking anyone if they knew where the Dodge family was and periodically yelling "Wesley!! Wes!!" and finally gave up.

We pushed our bikes down to the beach, started unrolling our sleeping bags and immediately a policeman driving a dune buggy came growling over and said no camping allowed, we would get thrown in jail for vagrancy. He made us pack back up and followed us until we left the park. By now it was after 10pm, we of course had no lights and it also started to rain. We were starving, too.

Back in those days, 7-11's were relatively new and they got their name because they were open from 7am to 11pm every day - not 24 hours. As we pedaled along we saw the lights go out in a 7-11 and the guy locking the doors get into his car and  drive away in the rain. We promptly put our rolled our sleeping bags out under the tiny available overhang and slept there - with no dinner.

The next morning we were awakened at 0630 by the guy opening the store, who had pity on us (since we had no money to buy food) and gave us wrinkly lukewarm hot dogs or sausages from those heated roller  things and some donuts he was going to throw out - but nothing to drink because he said the cups were counted so management could make sure they weren't giving drinks away. He did let us stick our heads in the sink and slurp from the faucet...

We rode across the street to the beach, looked at the ocean, didn't even go in, and dejectedly got back on the bikes for the 100 mile ride home. About 40 miles in we were actually on a stretch where Sunrise Highway was a divided highway and bikes weren't allowed - a policeman threw us off the road, but he looked at my friend Russell and said I've seen you before - turns out we were near Russell's uncle's house, the officer told us how to get there, we pedaled over, got fed, and his uncle was heading west to pick something up somewhere and threw us and out bikes in the back and saved us 30 of the remaining 60 miles.

There is a hiking saying "The trail always provides," and another old saying that "God watches out for children, drunks and fools." We certainly proved 2 out of 3 of that last one!