W hen I was in my twenties, camping did not appeal in the slightest. “If I can’t plug my hairdryer in, I’m not going,” was my mantra.
Then in around 1988, Jack and I were persuaded to spend an August weekend under canvas in Builth Wells, mid Wales. We bought a festival tent, a camping stove, and a couple of canvas chairs and pitched on a small site just outside the town. That night, it rained heavily.
By morning the campsite looked like a wet Glastonbury and everything we had brought with us was covered in mud. It continued raining most of the weekend, and it was really cold. At one point our friend Sarah, a nurse, produced some emergency foil blankets she had in the car, and we all sat around a one-pot-wonder on the camping stove, looking like victims of some traumatic event.
But we were hooked.
It seems inconceivable that after that weekend we would ever want to go near a tent again and yet, we loved it. There was something about the freedom, the self-sufficiency, the return to a more basic way of living, that really appealed.
Camping & hiking
A fter that, camping weekends became a regular feature of our lives. We would get away from work as early as possible on a Friday, pack the car, and head off to the Lake District, Wales or Cornwall. Once we had pitched the tent and got everything set up, we cracked a beer, sat in our canvas chairs, and relaxed in a way we never could if we had simply stayed at home. There was no housework to do, no shopping or cleaning, and no briefcase sending guilt vibes my way. There was just the smell of the grass, the sight of the hills, and a whole weekend ahead of us.
On the Saturdays we would head off on a long hike, one that often ended with dinner at a local pub before returning to the campsite. If there was no pub in walking distance, we cooked. On Sundays we made a full English breakfast before heading off on a short walk and then packing up at leisure to return home.
We lived for those weekends.
Gadgets galore
O ur regular camping companion was Sarah, and both she and Jack were obsessed with finding new gadgets for our trips. It was an ongoing competition between the two of them to see who could come up with the best new addition to our kit. From non-slip mats and toilet bags with hooks to hang them up, to torches that converted to lanterns – all things that today are considered standard kit but that 20 years ago were gadgets.
Needless to say, copious volumes of wine were consumed over the course of the weekend, and we had mad adventures that we still laugh (mostly) about today. We also discovered multiple amazing walks courtesy of the AA Secret Britain book around which we centred our trips.
After we left Britain and moved to Tenerife, we only went camping once, to the pine forest of Vilaflor on the outskirts of Teide National Park. The ‘facilities’ consisted of a hole-in-the-ground toilet and one standpipe of non-drinkable water. After we were woken at 7am on Sunday morning by hunters and their dogs, mere metres from our tent, we decided it just wasn’t the same as it used to be, and the tent stayed in the garden shed. When we moved to Portugal we left the tent and all our equipment and gadgets behind.
At the start of this month, for the first time since that trip to Vilaflor, we headed up to Cheddar Gorge and pitched our brand-new tent at the Petruth Paddocks campsite at the foot of the Mendip Hills. From the moment we arrived on site to the day before we came home, it rained. It rained while we tried to figure out how to pitch the new tent; it rained the next morning while we were trying to brew fresh coffee; it rained when we went walking in the hills and in Cheddar Gorge; and it rained so heavily in the night it kept me awake for hours.
But we absolutely loved it.
For the first time ever, we had electric hook-up which enabled us to have an inflatable bed – luxury – and we invested in a portable loo for those 4am bladder moments – the ultimate gadget. And ironically, now that what my hair looks like is no longer of major importance, had I wanted to, I could even have plugged my hairdryer in.
