Camping Horrors

Lucy’s column for August 12.
Camplo…1
We’ve had some rum holidays in our time.
We once joined forces with my sister’s family to rent a cottage in the wilds of Wales, advertised in the Sunday Times, no less, so it should be posh. But nothing prepared us for a flock of sheep dancing on the roof at regular intervals – the house was built into the rain-swept hillside – nor for the bath, standing on bricks in the kitchen, ferns cascading from the ceiling, and a family of toads under the wonky floor-boards.
The two cars both left bits of their under-belly on the mile-long track up to this sparsely-furnished shack – we found the "complete with telly" under a tea-cosy - and the one channel we could summon showed wall-to-wall Eisteddfod. Worse still, we were in a North Wales "dry" county, so our Sunday lunchtime drink was scuppered. Desperation drove us to join the not-so-dry Conservative Club for the day, totally at odds with the old man’s left-wing leanings, but needs must when the devil drives.
And it was North Wales which set the scene for our next adventure, this time a family-run hotel recommended to us by our late friend and colleague, Alan Smith. The setting was exquisite, the food and facilities excellent. But it turned out to be not so much "family" as "familiar", as the old-retainer odd-job-man, who doubled as a waiter and bottle-upper, took a shine to himself. He served him last at every meal to keep him in the dining room, and leapt out at him from nooks and crannies along the bedroom corridors.
After a few days, the better half made his excuses and left me and the kids to our car-less fate. But he was soon replaced by the next victim to book in. And Willy – for that was his name – took us under his wing, drove us to the beach every day, and provided free picnics.
But perhaps my worst experience was a fortnight in France, under canvas.
He’d borrowed the all-singing, all-dancing, tent, complete with zipped-in bedrooms and spring-loaded poles, from the landlord of a Burton pub. All went well at the demonstration in the pub function room, and the contraption folded up into a dinky little bag. But come the hour – around midnight, in the unfamiliar surroundings of a cricket-infested French site, with two tired and fractious kids, one with a broken arm in plaster, and a wife having a bad hair day – he couldn’t hack it.
The French and German happy campers, well practised in the art of giving rough-living a sophisticated edge, were relaxed as newts, ready to crawl into their little home-from-home which came complete with fridges, dining tables, even the odd vase of flowers, as we sat in the middle of our little patch, surrounded by bits of tent, primus stove, washing-up bowl, and bags of tinned stew and spaghetti hoops, which was to be our diet for the forseeable future. But it must be said, in the spirit of united nations, they came to our rescue and completed in two minutes, the puzzle he’d fought with for two hours.
I cried for the entire two-week ordeal. And we never did get that tent back into its package.
Our kids wallow in the carry-on-camping scene, and have the pop-up caravan contraption from a trailer down to a fine art, from Scotland to Spain. And according to reports, the credit squeeze is tempting more and more families to follow this economical holiday route, with equipment sales up six per cent. Oh, I like the fresh air. It’s the hard earth, cold showers, 3 am trek to the loo, cacophony of copulating crickets, beastly bugs, and dearth of electric sockets, which put me off joining you all.
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