Happy(ish) Campers
Memories from a weekend in a field.
We went camping near Castle Howard in North Yorkshire last summer. I am not yet convinced by camping - it seems an awful lot of hassle to make yourself voluntarily homeless - but Louise spontaneously bought a giant tent and all the gear anyone would ever need (from a man on Facebook) and will be damned if we don’t make the most of it.
After returning home from our previous trip with a broken tent pole, a broken spirit, and three relentless days of washing cycles awaiting, I subtly suggested we might break-even if we sold the gear on ASAP, but this was met with short shrift.
“The boys loved it, Andy.”
“Did they?”
“Yes.”
And that, I suppose, was that. We are now a camping family.
Prior to setting off, I’d worked from home, a gruelling shift in which I was called, “a dopey dickhead” (by a man on probation, not my wife.) My final task of the week was a video call with a prisoner that I’d forgotten about when saying I would, “definitely, definitely be ready to leave at 2.30 p.m. Definitely.”
Mid-call, Louise barged into our office/general dumping ground to collect the remainder of the camping equipment and the prisoner must have been confused to see that my background contained a frowning woman carrying a gas canister. I chose not to mention it and put myself on mute.
“Do you mind getting the rest of the stuff a bit later, Lou? Just in the middle of some…”
She responded with a barbed comment about my lack of meaningful involvement in the packing, a theme which precedes most (all) of our weekends away.
After my prison call had finished, I headed downstairs where my family were standing in the drive alongside numerous items which had not fit in our too-small roof rack. A teenage salesman at Halfords had lauded it as, “the cream of the crop, roof rack-wise,” but neglected to mention it is the direct opposite of a TARDIS.
I glumly accepted my fate and clambered into the passenger seat while the items, including the gas cannister and a large camping stove, were loaded onto my lap.
Following a journey marred by crawling traffic and being unable to move any of my limbs, we finally arrived at the campsite. I peeled myself out from under the metal mountain and Louise provided the boys with some sticker books while we set everything up. Although pitching the tent is still a monumental pain in the neck, it is getting easier. Or so I thought.
“Do you have the mallet, dear wife?”
“No, I thought you’d packed it, Andy?”
Instead of doing what a normal person might do and borrowing one from another camper, I started trying to hammer the tent pegs into the ground with a rock. When the first peg bent in half, I swore loudly and dearly wished I was sitting on our nice, indoor sofa, drinking a can of IPA and watching The Bear. With Louise stunned by my ineptitude, a kind lady ambled over, lent us her mallet, and saved an argument.
As the boys charged around, Louise opened a bottle of wine, and I felt the week’s stresses dissipating. Before taking my first sip, however, I started sneezing incessantly, eyes streaming. Along with the mislaid mallet, I had also forgotten my antihistamines; the ONE THING I cannot be without when living in a field.
“I need to find a Tesco Express urgently,” I said, getting into the spirit of being at one with nature.
I returned over an hour later, having been on a round-the-houses tour of North Yorkshire. I’d picked up a takeaway pizza as a softener but, given I’d left Louise to do the boys’ bedtime routine on a campsite by herself, it understandably did little to placate her. That it was one of the worst pizzas we’ve ever eaten didn’t help.
After I’d apologised, we had a glass of room-temperature Pinot in plastic beakers and Louise informed me the boys had gone to sleep almost straight away. In a bid to quash their 5 a.m. wakeups, she bought them a small blackout tent to go inside our main tent. I’d initially dismissed a tent within a tent as a bonkers idea, but they slept for a straight 12 hours, and I will happily swallow my words; Louise’s take on Inception has, it turns out, been a masterstroke.
Sadly, I didn’t fully benefit as I woke up to deafening birdsong at 4.30 a.m., and spent the next two hours tossing, turning, and sneezing.
“Shh, Andy!” Louise said from the other side of our deflated inflatable mattress. “For God’s sake!”
“Do you think I want to be sneezing?”
This is a conversation we’ve had, I would estimate, 7,000 times.
After the boys arose, I cooked some bacon sandwiches (my “first helpful contribution to the weekend”) and we had a pleasant walk around a lake, looking, at Joshua’s instruction, for dragonflies, and Jacob’s more ambitious request: lava monsters. By the time we’d got back to the tent(s), it was still, astonishingly, only 9 a.m, though. Time on a campsite moves at the same pace as on a treadmill, it seems.
“So, what do you fancy doing for the next 10-12 hours, then?” I asked.
We decided to visit the grounds of Castle Howard, somewhere I haven’t been since an ill-fated teenage trip with my dad who attempted to explain the plot of Brideshead Revisited while I trudged around with my hood up before insisting we listen to Rage Against the Machine at an unnecessarily high volume all the way home. I’ve been informed (by some sources) that Louise was no picnic as a teenager either so we are due our just comeuppance when the boys are older.
This time, we had a lovely morning, riding the train, looking at the house, and exploring the grounds. Now in my late 30s, I have entered the stately home phase of life; forget nightclubs, my main source of weekend excitement these days is discovering what the soup of the day is in a National Trust café.
After lunch (carrot and coriander) and a caffeine fix, we mustered the energy to face the adventure playground. The sun had broken through the clouds and, at the top of a rope bridge, the boys’ cheeks were rosy, hair matted to their foreheads. I advised them to take their coats off and slung them off the bridge, towards where we’d been sitting.
A middle-aged woman came charging over, frantic.
“THANK GOD FOR THAT!”
“I’m sorry? Are you ok?” I asked.
“I saw the coats in the corner of my eye and thought a child had fallen off the bridge!”
She laughed it off, but I felt terrible. Lesson learned: do not chuck coats off rope bridges at adventure playgrounds.
We got back to the campsite at around 4 p.m. With no fridge available, we were dismayed to discover our selection of meat was now both offensive and inedible, so dinner was warm peanut butter sandwiches, Pom-Bears and marshmallows.
Afterwards, Louise and I sat on our camping chairs and kept a loose eye on the boys as they played a lengthy game which involved little more than filling up a bottle at a communal drinking tap, pouring the water on the floor, and laughing. Not our finest contribution to climate change but, in our defence, they were having a great time.
Speaking of rising temperatures, by the time we’d put the boys to bed in their small pitch-black hole, our white wine was as warm as a passable latte.
“We need to invest in a camping fridge, Andy.”
Next time we go, I’ll have to free up some more space on my lap.
Thanks for reading! Obviously, it is the wrong time of year for camping in Northern England but we’ve been pretty much housebound for the past fortnight so I fancied revisiting this trip (and remembering a time when I was warm.)
Do you have any fond memories (or disastrous tales) from camping trips?
What are your thoughts on camping in general? Worth the hassle?
Finally…. For reasons unknown, this post about the January Blues has landed me an influx of subscribers over the past few days. If you are new here, I just wanted to say THANK YOU and welcome to The Flagging Dad!
I visited Castle Howard with my mum when I was about your age
As we wandered round the house she got angrier and angrier, muttering loudly enough for people nearby to hear things like 'Look at that! Look at that! Built on the backs of the working class', 'bloody effete aristocrats' and 'first up against the fucking wall'
She then insisted we buy a huge metal peacock which we had to carry miles to the car, barely fitted in even with the back seat down, and which squeaked alarmingly all the 200 miles home. It lives in her garden to this day, lurking in the shrubbery
Never ever visit Castle Howard with my mum
I have to share a story here, though I hope it doesn't get me into trouble.
I was, amazingly, a proper good little Boy Scout - this was the Boy Scouts of America even though all my camping adventures took place in Spain, Germany and the UK. I did wilderness survival training and all that. I loved camping in my school years.
Fast forward to my early 20s. A girlfriend and I decided to go camping in upstate New Hampshire. It was her first time, she'd also grown up outside the US, so I thought I'd show off my camping 'skills'.
We also thought it would be a riot if we did some mushrooms to add to the experience. Bad idea.
An even worse idea: eating the mushrooms BEFORE setting up the tent. They were far more potent and kicked in much faster than anticipated.
An even WORSE idea: not checking the tent equipment before setting off. Turns out the poles and stakes were all missing. Nowhere to be found.
All my years of camping were in the European wilderness, just a few of us boys and our leaders. This was a ghastly organised campsite where you had to pay for an allotted space and there were people everywhere. I'd never seen this before.
The two of were a laughing mess. It was early afternoon and starting to drizzle and we were flustered over the missing poles, but neither of us could stop laughing at the absurdity of it all and other campers were not amused. Not one bit.
After an hour or two of fruitlessly and futilely attempting to put up a pole-less tent, we had no choice but to call it quits. It was raining harder by this point. But we couldn't leave, I was in no condition to drive and my girlfriend didn't have a license and as a non-US citizen, it was a tad risky, the more so because it was a rental car in my name. We had to wait it out, but I was in a right state. She felt fine, so she ended up driving and spending a couple of hours down the road at a roadside diner where we attempted to come to our senses.
That was over 2 decades ago and I haven't tried camping again.