We carried on camping
did. We travelled the entire length of the country, had many exciting and hilarious times – and our two dogs thought it was pretty good, too.”
Being able to take pets with them was another plus for campers, as Yvonne Parsons remembers: “Aged seven, I didn’t want to leave my cat, Inky, behind so Dad put him on my lap in the sidecar of the motorbike. Inky enjoyed our holiday in Dymchurch. He slept on my bed all day and at night
‘It was bitterly cold and the people nearby were partying until the early hours’
explored the campsite, bringing me a present of a mouse or two.
“The one thing I didn’t like was the creepy crawlies. One morning I slipped into my plimsolls to go to the toilet block. While I was there I felt something in my shoe and when I took it off, a large black beetle crawled out. When I screamed, Mum said: ‘That’s what you get being in the countryside.’ “I wailed: ‘I don’t like camping!’, but I must have changed my mind because I look happy in the photo (below left) taken when we went to Lyme Regis the following year.”
Rosemary Medland was 18 when she first went camping with three friends: “We borrowed a huge, bright orange tent and with our quilted sleeping bags were warm and cosy, even when it rained and little frogs crept in under the tent flaps.
“We took it in turns to cook sausages and bacon on the primus stove. My job was tea maker, using a tiny kettle and tin mugs. Being outdoors all day and going for long walks gave us a good appetite. We treated ourselves to a Sunday lunch in the local pub and made friends with the other campers, some of whom became penpals.”
Toilet blocks were a luxury not yet invented when Iris Eardley used to go camping: “A campsite recommended by my brother-in-law had a toilet that was a wooden contraption sited over a stream with a lever you operated to expel the contents. It never occurred to us to take a photo of it – we were too busy laughing!”
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