Camping curtesy of Cl#rks*n

[markandlynn]

Interesting news from the quagmire. Sales of tents and camping equipment are up by 40% as the credit crunch bites and families appear to ditch their annual pilgrimage to the Mediterranean.

According to tenting enthusiasts, a fortnight in Mallorca costs a family of four about £3,000, whereas they can spend two weeks under canvas in Devon for as little as £500.

I don’t doubt this is true. But I’m not sure the comparison is relevant, because they aren’t really comparing like with like. Arguing that a holiday in Mallorca is more expensive than a holiday in a field full of cow dung is the same as arguing that a Rolls-Royce Phantom is more expensive than hitchhiking.

Tenting works well when you are in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban, but I find it extraordinary that a family should say: “Well. Things are tight. So let’s spend our holiday this year soggy and quarrelling in a room none of us can stand up in properly.”

If you are that hard up, and you are so desperate for a change, then why not simply stay at home and cut your legs off?

It’s claimed by medical experts that we cannot remember pain, but that isn’t true, because 40 years ago my parents took me on a tenting holiday on the west coast of France, and I remember every little detail of it – so much detail that sometimes it makes me cry.

I remember the rain, and the way it cascaded down into the hollow where our tent was built. I remember the wind that knocked it down. I remember the Germans laughing at us. I remember the hateful food – mustard-encrusted salmonella entombed in the pungent aroma of Calor gas.

I remember the soggy sleeping bags, the sloping floor, the stones that dug into my back, the lack of sleep, the arguments, the discomfort, the pain, the misery, the mosquitoes, the desperation, the homesickness and my poor little sister’s confused face asking: “Why have our parents done this to us?”

At home we had headroom and walls. We had space. And when we wanted to go to the lavatory, we didn’t have to tiptoe through the ooze to a filthy shower block full of yet more Germans with faulty bomb-aiming equipment. I can see them now if I close my eyes. All those massive Germanic *****; some not even close to the centre of the 101 bogs they had in France in those days.

I don’t doubt for a moment that it hadn’t cost very much money, but even today I cannot work out why it cost anything at all. Nor can I work out why a fortnight’s holiday under canvas today could possibly cost £500. Killing yourself would be so much cheaper and more pleasant.

In every single walk of life technology has made things easier since the 1960s. We have dishwashers, computers and oven-cleaners that wipe away grime in a flash. So you might imagine tenting had come on in leaps and bounds as well.

It hasn’t. As I discovered on my trip to the North Pole, it’s still an impenetrable maze of zippers, flaps, straps, exploding cookers and tent pegs that have the structural rigidity of overboiled pasta. Oh, and the skin of the modern tent is still exactly one inch smaller than the frame over which it must be stretched. This means that when you finally get it up you will have no fingernails, no wife, no children, no voice and not a shred of dignity either.

And where will you be? In a wood? Then you won’t sleep because every noise at night, among the trees, is Freddy Krueger. In a field? Nope. You will wake up dead with a cow on your head. On a campsite? Ha. Well, then you’ve really had it because women, and I have no clue why, think tenting is erotic. Which means you’re going to have to spend the night listening to a hundred wizened ramblers bouncing around on the only pole in all of tenting that’s still upright.

[Predictable Bob]

I think he's pretty close to the mark ...

and that's why my tent's made out of tin !


<Cue return fire from the canvas nutters>

[frosty68]

I think he's pretty close to the mark ...

and that's why my tent's made out of tin !


<Cue return fire from the canvas nutters>

I work away in summer, and lived in a tin tent for the warm months (25 ft twin axle), got to say I've learnt to hate them, and bought a folding camper for weekends away.

[border caz]

Coming from a Scouting family, from a very young age I was regularly taken by my parents to fields in the middle of nowhere, full of long grass and cowpats, to spend my time in a house made of material, sleep on the ground and use a hole in the ground for my No1s and 2s.

And it always rained.

But I loved it and have been a camper/caravanner/motorhomer ever since.

That's probably where he went wrong - once is not enough to appreciate it.

[Palujia]

Ah, the memories ! I was a Boy Scout in the 50's and we wore blue serge uniforms (why blue I never found out ?) shorts and Baden Powell hats that always flopped in the rain - never nice and stiff brims like the obligatory picture of BP in the scout hut. We had ex-Army Bell tents made of very stiff canvas which were sods to put up for 11 yr old boys. My Gran made me a "sleeping bag" which consisted of an old eiderdown sewn up on 3 sides ! For some reason best known to the Scout leader we always seemed to pitch the tents on the side of a hill and we were either head up hill or feet as we all had to sleep with our heads towards the pole . We had to fill hay bags to sleep on - not comfortable ! and as it was always cold and wet we put clothes ON to go to bed !Cooking over open fires and digging holes for ablutions ! I thought when I joined the Army things might get better but no - sleeping in holes in the ground half filled with water - Then the advent of the better kit - The cold weather sleeping bag (otherwise known as the Jolly green maggot)Good parkas and Goretex. Back in Civvy life SWMBO decided we would go caravanning - bought a little van - cold water only, gas lights and so small you could lay in bed and put the kettle on for tea ! = porta loo (known as bucket and chuck it)
but we had fun and it wasn't so cold. Things evolved into what we have now a 26ft twin axle van with fixed double bed, Alde wet central heating, steerable satellite dish, motormover, microwave, and power shower ! Out all year not just summer, and some of the places we have been make mediterranean hols (crowded beaches and screaming kids) seem dreadfull by comparison - We go to a site in Snowdonia with a 360 degree panoramic view, a site in the Dales with endless quiet, just the wind in the trees and bird song. I could go on for pages - and this for the price of a caravan pitch (on small sites as little as £10 per night with an electric hook up) Put the prices on package hols down please so that THEY don't find out how great things are now (PS watch out for "Glamping") not much "roughing it" there !!!

[martybartfast]

... Things evolved into what we have now a 26ft twin axle van with fixed double bed, Alde wet central heating, steerable satellite dish, motormover, microwave, and power shower

When I first read the post I thought that said motormower, I had visions of you turning up at the camp site, getting out the mower and cutting the grass on your pitch

When I was a nipper my cousin bought a small 4 man frame tent and she planned for her first trip a week in Wales with her dad, my dad, my brother and me; my mum was adamant that we would never get her in a tent, but the day before we left the boiler at her work blew up and she was laid off for a week so she came along too. There were 6 of us in this tiny tent for a week, it was one of the best holidays we'd ever had and the weekend after we got back home we were down the camping shop and had bought our own, from then on it was camping all the way until my parents bought a tin tent.

I don't think you can beat it!