Carry on camping
Every issue, our Editor at Large, Valery relives the best bits of our lives. This fortnight, when we packed a rucksack and headed for the great outdoors…
When I hear my husband’s fond memories of camping in days gone by – when you asked a farmer if you could stay in his field, pitched your tent and bought breakfast milk from him in the morning – I sometimes wish I had come from a camping family. For newly wed Londoner Jean Ricketts camping in Cornwall in the Fifties was a revelation. “Transport was a motorbike with camping equipment in the sidecar – a canvas ex-MOD bivouac tent. Our destination? A farmer’s field with a standing cold tap and chemical loo. I must have been in love! But I couldn’t believe the blue-green sea and splendid scenery.” But for every day of sunshine... “I went camping with my Auntie Margaret and Uncle Ernie to Harlech,” emails Elizabeth-Mary Cartwright. “The date, July 30, 1966 – the day that England won the World Cup. I had watched every match of the competition but had to miss the final. We settled down for the night and at about 2am there was the most terrible thunderstorm. Uncle Ernie held Auntie Margaret and myself in his arms for the rest of the night. “Next morning Auntie Margaret (unsurprising) said we were going home, so the wet tent was packed away. It took many days to dry it out – and I only got to see the winning goals from the match much later. I’ve never been camping since.” But even the initially enthusiastic sometimes have to admit defeat, as Pamela de la Touche found... “I persuaded my husband to help out my brother-in-law with his Boy Scouts camping troop – myself and our children would come along too. We were to stay in the farmhouse while the men and boys slept under canvas. But the field turned out be full of stinging nettles a foot high so our first job was to go into town and buy long trousers. “The farmhouse was very grubby so the next job was to thoroughly clean the fridge. The weather was not kind and after one week I couldn’t wait to get home! I vowed camping was not for me – especially when it involved making a large amount of Instant Whip in a bucket!” Many of you had happier memories of camping as Girl Guides – although there did seem to be a theme. “The tent used to end up full of every type of insect,” remembers Geraldine Miller. “However, this didn’t bother us. I remember on my first trip I woke up and thought there was a piece of chocolate in my ruck sack. As I was about to bite into it, it moved. Turned out it was a slug.” And this from Ann West. “One stormy night the Guide Captain sent us to our tent and told us not to use our torches because of the lightning. She then brought us all a cup of cocoa. “I said to my friend, ‘mine has a lot of
‘To our horror, there was the remains of a huge daddy long legs. Ugh’
skin’. So, against the rules, we got our torches so we could remove the skins. To our horror, there was the remains of a huge daddy long legs. Ugh.” Camping holidays are full of surprises, as Sylvia Davies found. “Many years ago when I was a student nurse, three of us decided to go on a camping holiday to Lulworth Cove. None of us had ever been in a tent before and we’d borrowed all the equipment. “We stopped a lady to ask if she knew anywhere we could put up our tent. ‘Just follow me,’ she said. It was very dark and we had much fun putting up the tent, never having done it before. We were very tired and all slept like logs. Next morning when we opened the tent flap we found we had slept the night in the graveyard of the local church…” It could have been worse, as Margaret Rymer discovered. “In 1972, with an orange ridge tent, two sleeping bags and little else, we set off for the south of France. After three days, tired and desperate after an endless search for a campsite, we set up camp next to the funfair in St Tropez alongside two other British couples and a few gypsy caravans. “The only facilities were a cold water tap and a field of vines. Each day a small, very elderly French woman quickly collected a fee from us and then disappeared. But on the third day at dawn we awoke to find a policeman, revolver in his hand, staring into our tent, demanding to see our passports and ordering us to leave.” The last word goes to Anne Orr. “It was Glasgow in the heatwave summer of 1976 and my fiancé (now husband) decided a few days away camping would be great. He borrowed a two-man tent and we set off to Rothesay and the Coop camping ground. The tent was so full of holes I refused to sleep in it. We approached the campsite owner and it just so happened he had the ‘honeymoon chalet’ available for rent. With the only alternative the moth-eaten tent, we rented it for a couple of nights. The honeymoon chalet was a tin prefab in garish colours, with single beds, scant furnishing and a coin-op slot for the electrics. We still laugh about it.”