These photos and their caption have proved astonishingly popular. Update. Astonishingly astonishingly popular!

Twenty-four hours after I wrote this my post has been seen by 620,650 people on Twitter and 360,768 have interacted with it. I am delighted of course but also completely astounded.

Yesterday  I posted the two photos above on social media with the caption 'my camp last night and what I left behind'. I expected that some of my regular followers would probably like the pictures and some wouldn't be able to resist commenting that I appeared to be leaving my pack and poles behind. As the photos are rather mundane - the light was flat and the scene, whilst pleasant, was nothing special - I wasn't expecting a big reaction. 

Today I was surprised to see a large number of likes and comments, far more than usual. Many were approving of my showing I was only leaving some flattened grass ( thanks folks), some were amused at the idea I was leaving my gear behind whilst clearly knowing I wasn't, some appear to actually think I really was abandoning it.

All today the comments and likes have kept coming. Clearly this post touched something in many people, resumably as a reaction to all the pictures of trashed camps and dumped gear we've seen recently. Even so on checking Twitter Analytics I was stunned. At 7.30 this evening 208,373 people had seen the post and 72,572 had interacted with it. That is amazing. To put it in perspective my previous most popular post was seen by 41,352 people and had 5,131 interactions. Most of my posts come nowhere near those numbers.

Clearly there is a huge interest in wild camping photos and comments at present. In the next few days I'll post pieces on the trip in the pictures, my first since March, whether we should find a new name for wild camping, and putting the dirty camping problem in perspective with regard to protecting wild places.