Camping without divorce!
Who knew it was possible?
I have a mixed relationship with camping. As a child I was taken to a field in Wales - Dad didn’t like campsites - where my sodden cagoule was blown flat against my body like this.
Later, as young adults, my friend Linda and I pitched a tent on a beach on the Isle of Arran not realising that the tide would come in ‘that far’ - or indeed at all. We woke in panic, sloshing in water and had to drag our dripping nylon heap to dry land.
Many years on, a few weeks after we’d met, Jimmy and I decided it would be ‘romantic’ to escape London for a weekend of camping in Wales (yes, Wales again!). Here two hard lessons were learned:
1. Post-pub, we were woefully ill-equipped for a practical exam in tent erecting.
2. Jimmy has a cockle allergy. We did not know this - unfortunately he’d ordered cockles in the pub - so his night was spent not gazing dreamily at the canopy of stars but lurching in panic to Toilet Block B.
I’m not blaming camping for this - or Wales - but still.
Why put yourself through this when other options (booking a hotel/staying at home) are available? Back then, I couldn’t understand why anyone still did it. Camping seemed curiously 1970s, tied in with naturism, maybe - all those sausage barbecues and a friend’s fond reminisces about some porn video he’d unearthed while exploring the inner depths of his parents’ wardrobe: Camping With Big Roger in Copenhagen.
I wasn’t sure about that. Sure, you love nature - so look at it through a car window or on TV! Wasn’t that what David Attenborough was for? To save us from sleeping on air beds and burning ourselves on volatile camping stoves?
Then I became a mother, which everyone knows warps your brain. With all thoughts of wet cagoules/Copenhagen erased, I decided that camping would be ‘fun’.
Notice how ‘arduous’ is somehow rebranded as ‘adventure’ when you have kids? We bought a massive tent comprising a lavish system of entry doors, many separate inner sleeping pods arranged off a central corridor and an extension, if the bloody thing wasn’t big enough already.
I’m not sure why we’d bought a tent with separate bedrooms. Getting up to anything ‘adult’ was as likely as suddenly being able to play Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor and anyway, Jimmy and I weren’t even speaking by then.
Erecting the tent was going badly so I was instructed to ‘take the kids away’. Where to? The far end of the campsite? Moscow? How long was this going to take?
I was finished with camping after that.
Then last weekend the hot weather (rare for Scotland) possibly sent us a bit mad - because we went wild camping on a beach in Argyll.
We know Kilmory beach pretty well. It’s beautiful, blissfully quiet and has no amenities whatsoever. There were three people there, plus one dog, on the sweep of silvery sand. We erected our tent, cooked some chicken (on a stove), lit a fire and it was amazing!
There was no shouting or crying or being ‘sent away’. What was different this time?
The tent was fine. ie, it had been checked (by Jimmy) and all the essential parts were there. On opening it out we weren’t greeted by some ancient knickers.
Unlike our Welsh weekend we were 100% sober so we knew which way up the tent should go.
We also understood that, sea-wise, the tide comes in quite a bit (technical term).
I hate to say it but camping with two adults is a sight easier than herding three small children into their respective ‘pods’.
It was the simplest of tents. A cat could have put it up.
The weather was glorious which was sheer luck, obviously.
Being old now - mature! - we remembered to bring cooking utensils, including tongs for grappling hot food (well Jimmy did).
I’ve reached the lifestage where I get excited about nice plastic cereal bowls and bacon, fried outdoors!
And I genuinely enjoy being ‘a state’, witness:
Best of all there were NO COCKLES and therefore no unsavoury barfing.
Please share your camping tips because - unbelievably to me - I want to do it again!
Love,
Fiona xx
PS Join Carly & co on the Ayrshire coast, where one little seaside cottage is full to bursting. My newest novel, The Full Nest, has over 600 reviews (4.5* average) and is just 99p in ebook right now! You can buy here xx
Hilarious, Fi! Your latest wild camping cook-up looks enticing, though - very Keith Floyd with those ingredients and actual tongs!
My childhood camping trips were mostly sitting in our tiny bubble car having all the gear packed around us kids, then the car breaking down every year because we were majorly overloaded. Described in a Substack piece last August, and thanks for stirring the memories again.
Camped out with the grandkids in the garden last summer as overspill accommodation and we survived!
When I took the Granddaughter Layla to End Of The Road festival, we were both crammed into a small two person tent (more like a two midget tent) without much of a 'porch'. She ended up moving in with the other teenagers in our group, who had a giant pod-y tent on the other side of the campsite. Returned late one night to find the dreaded deflated airbed scenario in my miserable little tent. Searched everywhere for the pump, and the morning after a shocking night's sleep on actual terra firma, I reversed out of the tent on all fours with grass in my hair (not the best look) to the realisation that Layla had borrowed it. I'll know to hide the pump from thieving teenage fingers next time, and I've now bought a MASSIVE tent I can stand up in. Big high five to you for camping in that tiny looking tent.