In Germany we don't got this right, but seldom I have been prohibited from "roaming" the landside. But we aren't allowed to put a tent anywhere and sleep in it, which is rather sad.
A friend of mine went on a hiking holiday in Scotland and he told me, he just walked till he was tired, put his tent up on the next green spot and slept there.
As an aside, here in Scotland you quite often don't even need to put up a tent - there are houses/huts in a lot of wild locations, known as bothies, that are completely free to use:
we aren't allowed to put a tent anywhere and sleep in it, which is rather sad
Probably connected to the risk that squatter's rights poses to the land owner... not that pitching a tent for a night is a serious risk, but squatter's rights really encourages that kind of culture.
Not knowing anything about squatter's rights (or law in general), shouldn't it be possible to just create a law putting whatever limits we want on camping WITHOUT the need for it to be completely forbidden?
I am just now in a place where free camping is not allowed, but the local authorities interpret the law as: "no tents between dawn and dusk". I wish that was put into a written law.
The key item of squatter's rights is that if a squatter occupies land with the land-owner's knowledge for a number of years, the land now legally belongs to the squatter.
One night of camping is not years, but squatter's rights certainly encourages land-owners to be ever-strict about visitors to their land.
A friend of mine went on a hiking holiday in Scotland and he told me, he just walked till he was tired, put his tent up on the next green spot and slept there.