Camping is not to everyone’s taste, nor is a hot beverage of your choice out of a melamine mug, but we like it and I think our offspring still enjoy it - our two nearly 21 year olds joining us again this year and given half a chance, I think our 25 year old and his wife would have come to spend some time with us all too.
Over the many years we have changed our rig- but always a tent, NEVER a caravan- had creatures eat part of it, suffered leaks, seepages and floods including a huge under footprint puddle which gave a kind of water bed feeling to the holiday ( thank you Perth - Scotland,not Australia) punctured airbeds ( pretty much every year), broken poles etc etc
It’s funny how some folks who would never camp ( and we know some who would NEVER camp 😉) and who we might try to persuade by selling the benefits of having electric lighting, fridge, toaster, kettle, cooker, coffee bean grinder, heater and hairdryer when required, duvet and proper pillows - essentially home from home, but the walls move when it gets windy- go on to say, ‘oh, but that’s not proper camping, that’s GLAMPING!’
Yes, ok, if you like!
But GLAMPING is not proper camping if you ask me - people who GLAMP don’t even put up their own tents! 😂 ( people who live in yurts are exempt from my inverted snobbery 😌)
Also, apparently if you do not spend every minute of every day on your campsite it’s not camping either! ‘What?!?!’ they say. ‘You go out for the day?!??!?!. That’s not proper camping!’
And a place to do your washing up with water coming from the taps hot enough to make a cuppa! ‘Whatever happened to carbolic soap and cold water? That’s not proper camping!’
And now we have an air beam tent ( inflatable poles y’know) which Keith’s barber likes to endearing call ‘The Balloon’ as in ,’ oh gawd, you’re not going away in that balloon again are you?’ But he never washes up his tea cups and he supports Charlton, so what does he know?
Anyway, apparently, no poles is a sell out too. Let me tell you, this baby goes up in 15 minutes as opposed to 50 and has reduced the ‘differences of opinion’ by 90%.
Yes, a midnight trip to the loo can be a 10 minute palaver- especially when it’s raining - but look up and see the stars!
And, we have never bought a TV or laptop and nor have we watched Netflix or catch up TV .... as a family; I have no idea what individuals might do in the privacy of their own rooms.
Then there’s the lovely bonus of neighbours who share the same thin walls, which to be fair is not at all bad - we must just go to great campsites with relatively quiet people. We have snorers that can compete if required, and do remember how hard it can be to sooth little children in the middle of the night.
Chatting is de riguer and I must now pay tribute to the lovely couple who just this very morning chatted to me while watching me struggle to drape some washing over a fence in a relatively high wind ( but amazing sunlight), carefully using the laces of vest tops to tie down tea shirts and pj bottoms only to say as they went on their way with their lovely dogs,’ You do realise there is a rotary airer round the corner with pegs , don’t you?’
Well, I do NOW! 🙄
However, lovely hotels, apartments, air bnbs and cottages are also grand places to stay and I would never say no to them, but - for us - there is just something character enhancing about knowing that when you do finally sit down onto your camping chair ( not a deck chair ☹️) or sink under a cloud soft duvet onto a slowly deflating matteress that you have properly deserved it.
