Is it possible to enjoy camping?

library footage of me smiling in our tent, while it was in our last home's garden

Camping – ah camping. Camping is the holiday we all think we should, and desperately want to like; but don’t.


Except…

Except… Are you ready for this?

Except this last weekend I did enjoy it – a lot!

I never thought I’d ever actually say that! However if I’m honest I cheated.

I admit it, I’m a big fat camping fraud and cheat. You see, I went when it was sunny. In fact the weather was lovely. I know, I cheated.

I’ve talked about my camping exploits before on Glen’s Life, so if you want to hear stories of real camping click here, or over at RBU click here where you will hear about rain, flat camp beds and vomit. Otherwise stay here and hear about pretend camping involving beaches and fun.

We bought our little tent about six years ago as an experiment. The idea was simple, we would buy the smallest, cheapest four man tent we could find to see if we liked camping. If we liked it and decided to do it properly then we would spend some money and buy a proper tent. The problem is that we kept going camping but never came back saying we liked it. So we never upgraded the tent. This would be fine if it wasn’t for the part of that last sentence that causes the trouble – “we kept going camping”. Why? We never EVER came back saying we liked it. We always wound up packing up early in a howling gale, vowing never to return.

Still – it is fun – isn’t it?

This weekend saw us book into Hoburne’s Cotswold park. Hoburne is a holiday company with caravan parks about the country, but at Cotswolds they also let you pitch a tent. So for starters the site was nice, facilities good, clean and plentiful. Also for any of you who are considering visiting Britain and don’t know where to go – the Cotswolds is a really quite lovely area, full of pretty villages and open countryside. The particular area we went to was near Cirencester and is a large area of lakes and natural land dedicated to wildlife. In short, I like it.

The first thing we did after pitching our tent was to go swimming in the quality indoor pool, which the boys absolutely loved. The weather wasn’t great on Saturday so we didn’t brave the outdoor pool.

The good weather meant that we could take full advantage of Cotswold Water Park and the boys abused the little man made beach and swam in the “sea” as they called it for most of Sunday afternoon. As Jo and I won ‘parents of the year’ awards for completely forgetting to apply any sun cream on them.

On Monday morning, after striking camp, we hit the outdoor pool and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen Jamie quite so happy or confident. My boys really do love swimming.

Before we went I was a little worried about the cost. For 2 nights in a tent with electric, Hoburne charged us over £80 – which is not cheap. However I have to say that with hindsight the money was very well spent. We stung them for at least £30 worth of swimming, and we went to ‘the club’ both nights for the boys to watch the kids show and dance at the disco, and also to watch the head entertainer’s magic show on Saturday night. So that’s at least £2.25 worth of entertainment right there! So if you say we had £32.25 back from them then we spent about £52.75 for two nights away in a tourist hot spot, during peak season prices, with electric and very good toilet & shower facilities, and I think that is very fair. (p.s. I’m joking about £2.25 – actually what price would you put on two nights entertainment that leaves your kids happy and knackered enough to go to sleep in a tent?)

The Sun helped of course.

The park had the usual extreme mix of people that you get at British caravan parks, which is a mix of quite middle class families getting back to nature, normal families just enjoying a reasonably priced holiday, and out and out benefit riders, out for every last penny worth they can get between TV programs. It really impressed me to see some quite massive Satellite dishes on top of the caravans and even by tents – Why let a good time get in between you and Coronation Street?

On Sunday night Daniel pulled a blinder by jumping up to try his hand at the competition in the evening show. He had to try and get a ping pong ball in a bucket after a single bounce. He was about the sixth person up to try (only two of the previous five had been kids) – and bang, in it went, winning us a free kids place at a local visiting farm. As this is only an hour from where we live it would be no hardship to go back and visit, especially as the man who eventually won the adult ticket, came over and gave it to us to go with Daniel’s one. Result! As I say, you get a really big mix in these places and to tar the whole site with the brush of its worse visitors is just plain wrong. I grew up holidaying at British caravan parks, and think they are great.

The only real problem is that I’ve come back from a camping expedition and foolishly admitted that “I liked it” meaning that I suppose we are finally going to have to upgrade the tent.

Looks like this weekend is going to be more expensive than I thought!

How have your holidays gone so far? Have you ever been camping and actually enjoyed it? Real camping I mean – not pretend camping like I did!