How We Got Hooked On Life In The Great Outdoors (20 May 1978)

About this time of year I used to be looking forward to our fortnight’s summer holiday.  If possible I always chose a fortnight in the period from the last two weeks of June to the first two weeks of July.  For this there were good reasons.  It covered the Wimbledon fortnight and usually the weather is at least passable for Wimbledon.  And it was in the period of longest daylight.  These two factors favoured my favourite form of holiday.  This was camping.  Not caravan camping, which is little more adventurous than being in a cottage on wheels, but honest, down-to-earth tenting.

We came to tenting via caravanning, plus a good deal of persuasion on the part of our boy, who was already hooked on it through jaunts with large or small parties of The Boys’ Brigade.  One summer at Minehead we were on a caravan site which also included a few tents.  I had a chat with one or two of the tenters and they were all enthusiasm.  “Unless you have your own caravan, you will have had to book one for a week or a fortnight from Saturday to Saturday, but we don’t have to book at all,” they pointed out.  “We pay a daily fee and can upsticks any time we like.  If it is raining cats and dogs here, but is fine on the south or east coasts, we can go there.  And if it looks like being wet over the whole country, we can pack up and go home without being a penny worse off.”

The following year I asked my wife: “What about tenting this time?  I can borrow a tent and a groundsheet from Reg Pacey for a pint or two a week.  A chap in the market sells pieces of foam rubber about four inches thick for ten bob apiece.  Two of those side by side will make a good double bed.  We already have a wick picnic stove and a hurricane lamp, and all the rest will be just ordinary household tackle.”

My wife said she’d try it for just one week.  Our son was delighted: “All you will have to do is take us and the tents (he already had a small one of his own) somewhere and help me put the tents up and I’ll do everything else – the cooking, the washing up and fetching the water,” he chanted.

And this proved to be very nearly right.

We came to a licensed site in a field just away from a cliff top to the north of Cromer.  The fee was only about 2s 6d a day.  Reg’s ridge tent was made of very heavy canvas and its poles were three inches thick, but next morning we were astonished when some nearby tenters asked how we had got on in the storm during the night.  We had known nothing of the storm, and both tents were bone dry inside.  The rest of the week was beautiful.  My wife vowed there were more creepy-crawlies in the average house or caravan than she ever found in a tent, and from that time forward until she began ailing we never considered taking any other form of holiday.

For the next holiday I bought a ridge tent and fly-sheet which Mr. Dudley, the Bletchley gas showroom manager, had for private sale at £2 10s.  The tent itself was not in very good shape, but its flysheet was magnificent and was in use by The Boys’ Brigade long after the tent had been discarded.

My next tent was a new British-made frame tent.  By that time I knew exactly what I wanted and this was it – small, compact, sturdy all the way round, just one small mesh window at the “kitchen” end and at the other an inner bedroom tent which could be clipped back so as nearly to double the living space, that tent cost me all of £32, but it is now in its 12^th year and still so sound that my son, who now has it in Germany, intends to spend six weeks in it while on a tour of Austria this summer and on occasional weekends besides.

We had a strong rope left over from Mr. Dudley’s tent.  Once, when a gale blew up, we passed this rope lengthwise over the frame tent and anchored it firmly to the ground.  It was the only frame tent on the site that was still standing next morning.

While our son was still with us we gathered certain other items of equipment for camping, every one of which also came in useful for the home at some time or other.

For lighting we had a paraffin pressure lantern because it gave out a fair amount of heat as well as providing splendid illumination.  Useful during electricity cuts!

For cooking we had a paraffin pressure stove and also my son’s pocket ditto.  Both gave a fierce heat and when we wanted to cook more slowly we placed one or sometimes two small asbestos mats between the flame and the food container.  We once tested my son’s pocket stove against a gas cartridge stove and found that despite the pricking and the priming we were drinking tea from the pocket stove before the water had boiled on the other.  And there was a vast cost difference in favour of the former.  The pressure stove has provided some hot dinners at home when something has happened to the piped gas supply.

We also had a collapsible “camp kitchen,” which doubled for a vegetable rack at home.  An inflatable double bed which came in handy when the house was crowded with overnight visitors.

For water we begged from a wine shop one of those strong but collapsible plastic containers, with tap, from which they dispensed cheap sherry.  They hold four or five gallons.  I kept one in the house ready-filled with water during the 1976 drought.

And, of course, we had sleeping bags.  Two of these opened out and zipped together, made a cosy night for two.

But what’s in all this for Mum?  You may ask.  Well, have you noticed who usually takes charge when a home barbecue is on the go? Camping is like that.  The old man is back in his boy scout days again and thoroughly enjoying it.  We rarely had a café meal.

We never had to save up for one of those holidays.  My pay advance was enough to cover the cost.  I took money from the bank against contingencies, but was always able to put it right back again on our return.  However, the main point was that they were some of the happiest times we ever had.  It was also nice to be able to go off for a weekend now and then in addition to the long holiday.

I recommend it to people of all classes who have children aged seven and upwards.  And I specially recommend it to able-bodieD couples in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s.  I met one couple who were spending the first summer of their retirement moving all round the coast of Britain in this way.  A happier pair you could not wish to meet.