The holidays GLAMPING FORGOT

WET WIPES, LOO ROLL AND CONDOMS! SURELY NOT? Shower blocks like a PoW camp. Dining in a gale-force wind. Running screaming from wild hogs. As demand for campsites soars, the memories that will have you sobbing into your sleeping bag

WHere are you going on holiday this summer? chances are, with campsites given the green light this month, many of us will be retrieving tents from dusty attics and heading off, happily socially distanced in our cars, praying the weather lasts.

Whether you’re already a jolly happy camper or a five-star-european-hotelturned-staycation-convert, you can’t argue that this nostalgic

UNTIL I was in my mid 50s I hadn’t even made it through the night camping in the back yard, but the brave new world of divorce introduced me to tent life at the same time as the joy of festivals.

Yeah man, I was suddenly waaay cool. ‘What do I need?’ I asked Wee Fran, veteran of Glastonbury at the ripe old age of 24. ‘Wet wipes, loo roll and condoms,’ she said. I choked on my Ovaltine. Surely not, I gasped. You might pull, she insisted. The only thing I intended to pull was my Cath Kidston festival socks.

On arrival at my pre-pitched orange tent in what looked like a refugee camp, where I found a deflating air mattress, the last thing on my mind was sex.

Fun? They call this fun? This was a humanitarian disaster. I needed an airdrop of blankets — and food that wasn’t vegan and overpriced.

I returned home less than converted to the idea of love in a tent. Or even just tents.

However, a year later, it was a different story. After meeting my partner we braved camping

British pastime suddenly holds a whole new appeal.

shortly after Boris made his announcement, one travel site reported a camping booking was made every three seconds, while another has seen bookings quadruple year on year.

After months of being cooped up indoors, it seems, the idea of spending a week in a field, however muddy, is more appealing than ever.

so, love it or hate it, now’s the time to dust off those wellies, brave the new ‘covid-secure’ shared showers — and take heed or inspiration from these five writers’ own forays into the great outdoors . . . again with proper, borrowed kit. Us, a rural field, a duvet and our own pillows. It was so cold we slept fully dressed and we fought over the duvet. It was cosy. At night we huddled by the camp fire under the stars and an umbrella, and sucked on a bottle of vodka, before stumbling in the dark into the bushes for a pee because the shower block wouldn’t have been out of place in a PoW camp, and cleanliness suddenly seemed an unnecessary bourgeois concept. As did sex. Too many layers to remove. However the days were long. We had no television. I draw a veil . . . My partner was so cheered by events that we recently invested in our own gear and might have been applauding the opening of campsites had it not been stolen from my car. Turns out there is a god after all.

CAMPING fills me, mostly, with fear. Childhood memories of school trips involving burnt Wall’s sausages, washing pans being cleaned with mud and the unrelenting damp that gets into your bones and never leaves. My children, however, adore it and will not be persuaded that a trip to a Bed & Breakfast guarantees a better night’s sleep and superior eggs and bacon. More than anything I can’t stand the expectation that because I once owned a Swiss Army knife I should be able to put up a tent, light a fire and fend off midges. As I frequently tell my wife — if she wanted Bear Grylls as a husband, she’d have to put up with the awful safari shirts and urine drinking. Thankfully, my oldest son, now 17, has a preternatural ability to erect a complex six-man tent complete with sitting room and porch. It leaves me in awe and wonder, as I stand there like a lemon holding another pole asking him where it should it go. But for all my moaning, once the tent is up and the sun is shining and the beer is cold, I can see the appeal. We live in London and most of our pleasures are urban: restaurants, cinema and hot running water. Camping is the antithesis of all that. Last year, I visited DadFest in Devon, a summer festival for fathers and their children. I was dreading it, presuming it would be a collection of sad, single fathers, moaning into their real ale about their ex-wives. I dragged my two youngest with me, Arthur, now eight, and Celia, now 12, who were also dubious about the enterprise. But it was a blast. The fathers (most of them happily married) enjoyed the freedom of being outdoors with their children. The highlight was when one of them brought out a powerful telescope — the size of a small child. On this crystalclear night, standing in a field miles and miles away from any city, Arthur and I looked into it and saw Saturn with all its rings. It was completely magical. My daughter spent all night with new friends toasting marshmallows on the open fire, while Arthur crawled into the tent and his onesie long after midnight. Maybe tents are better designed than when I was a child or the sleeping bags better quality, but we all slept as well as if we were tucked up in a local B&B. And maybe it was the fresh air — or the rings of Saturn still sparkling in our imagination — but breakfast cooked on the campfire was pretty tasty, too.