Sleeping under canvas.

Yes folks, you've guessed, today I'm blogging about camping! I first started camping aged 10 or so, at Guide Camp. I still remember those days fondly, from falling in a lake whilst rafting in my only clean clothes (and then having to spend the rest of the weekend in my 'jamas) to splatting earwigs with mallets and sneaking out for midnight feasts. In fact I first met one of my best friends at a Guide Camp, celebrating my 13th birthday by canoeing and probably singing jolly songs around a campfire, or something cliched like that.

I then progressed to long weekends away whilst at uni. My group of friends were very into walking up mountains (and then of course spending the evenings in the local real ale pub, hic) and camping was the only way we could afford to go away. One hugely memorable evening we left the ODG (Old Dungheon Ghyll) in the Lake District amidst pouring rain around midnight, and slowly discovered along our 1/2 mile walk back to the campsite that it was getting wetter, and the path was getting deeper in water, and ...you've guessed the rest. I spent that night on the back seat of the car, but my mad friends who braved the tents claimed it was more akin to sleeping on a water bed. Yep, the entire campsite was under about 6 inches!

Wales was also a popular destination. I think the 2 best evenings spent there was firstly the night we befriended an alleged SAS member who stoked our campfire up with a stack of pinched pallets (OK, we might have done the pinching...) and then proceeded to drag our sleeping friend Dazza feet first out of his tent and out of a very deep beer-induced slumber. I will never forget the look on his face, utter shock and rage at the same time, truly a You've Been Framed moment had such things as camcorders been invented at the time. North Wales then played host to the evening after another friend discovered he'd received a redundancy payout just after accepting another job, and from memory we chased every pint with a double; this lead to the awesome discovery that altitude cures hangovers! We traipsed up Crib Goch the next day with cracking heads, had a blissful hour on top, then came back down when the hangovers suddenly returned. Hair of the dog was the only cure for that one!

My 20's and 30's saw me spending many months travelling around the world, backpacking and overlanding. The details are for another post (or 5), but needless to say beer, rain and sleeping under the stars featured heavily.

But the thing that prompted this entry is that I have finally persuaded the Husband that camping is the way forwards for family holidays for us! He likes his creature comforts but the price and spontaneity of camping has tipped the balance in it's favour. We've spent the last six months collecting everything from a tent and sleeping bags to essentials such as large plastic wineglasses and a spare coffee pot. He's desperate now to put the tent up in the garden to give it a go, then all we have to do is wait for a weekend with decent weather. Ah, bum, therein lies the problem...