About

I'm an outdoor enthusiast, and for years I've had the same problem: the nature I actually want is the hardest thing to find. Most campsites are enormous and offer almost no nature at all. Wild camping is illegal across most of Europe. And every time I plan a trip, I end up with a dozen tabs open — Google Maps, a trail app, a few campsite sites, and the personal websites of whoever happens to run courses in that region.

It turns out I'm not unusual. If you want to sleep outside, walk for days, or learn to read a landscape properly, there is no single place to plan any of it. Bushcraft and survival courses are the worst of it — scattered across independent operators with nothing connecting them. You lose hours to research, and you still end up missing the thing an hour down the road that would have made the whole trip better.

The hosts have the mirror image of the same problem. Someone with twelve pitches in a quiet meadow, or ten years of guiding behind them, has no straightforward way to reach the people already looking for exactly that.

WildRoots is my attempt at both halves at once. Not a general booking site with an outdoors category bolted on — a place built only for sleeping outside, treks, expeditions and outdoor skills.

It's early. There are no bookings yet. But there's a plan, and a growing number of hosts who want to be part of it from the start. If that sounds like you — as a host, or as someone who'd rather book with a real person than a brand — I'd like to hear from you.

— Aiden Doss, founder