THOUSANDS of people marched over the weekend in one of Britain’s largest ever countryside access protests in anger at a new High Court ruling than bans wild camping on Dartmoor.

Groups of people from across the country gathered on the moorland, owned partly by Tory donor and hedge fund manager Alexander Darwell, on Saturday.

Mr Darwell won a case overturning the right to freely camp on large parts of the estate earlier this month, arguing that the right had never existed.

The area had been the only region in England where there was a right to wild camp without seeking permission.

Since the decision, an agreement has been reached to allow wild camping to continue in parts of Dartmoor National Park in exchange for an undecided management fee.

But campaigners hit out at the deal, which they said was a “ransom note” from landowners who would be able to revoke permission to camp at any time — and warned the public would have to pay for what had previously been a right.

Campaign group Right to Roam said: “Our right to be in nature should not be the plaything of the landowning elite.

“It is not something to be stripped away by legal theatrics, nor negotiated for a doff of the cap.

“It is our collective inheritance, a birth right which brokers our connection to the land and the stars.”

More than 50,000 hectares (123,500 acres) have been lost to wild campers under the deal, amounting to an 18 per cent reduction in the land available for walkers to camp in, according to an analysis by the group.