Lurking within tent: fair weather camper’s diary

The words “happy” and “camper” bring to mind rolling green countryside peppered with tents and wooden huts filled with smiling children spending evenings sitting around campfires singing Kumbuya and congratulating each other on their survival in the great outdoors.

Such visions, while pleasant enough, have always filled my Londoner’s heart with trepidation. I was never a Girl Guide, my knowledge of survival skills comes purely from the school of Ray Mears, and my understanding of camping in general is that it is something you do at music festivals if there’s absolutely no alternative.

I’ve camped only a handful of times: At festivals as a teenager; once with my parents and sisters (family of six crammed into a ridge tent, never again); and once on an impromptu bank-holiday last year, when I accidentally ended up sharing a field with a load of UFO spotters at an apparent hotspot in Suffolk.

So it was with some reluctance that I agreed to embark upon a three night camping trip to North Devon, eschewing mobile phone, laptop, radio, my usual impractical clothing, make-up and the desire to walk at an unusually aggressive pace to keep up with commuters.

Things didn’t start well. The Met Office informed me the day before departure of torrential rain, gale force winds and low lying mists. When we arrived at Barnstaple following a hefty train journey from Paddington via Exeter St Davids to pick up our hire car, the rain was already coming down. By the time we’d driven the hour to a campsite near Woolacombe Bay, we could barely see past the jagged cliffs on which we were to pitch our tent.

Extracting said tent from two oversized backpacks (this had taken a lot of careful planning on my boyfriend’s part) and laying it out to be pinned into the sodden earth, I noticed a rather large hole in one of the plastic windows. We panicked and raced out to buy gaffer tape, with which we lovingly bound the injured tent, with help of an Argos shopping bag.

This achieved, we ran down to the water at Woolacombe Bay and struggled into wetsuits to wash off London. I’d been slightly resistant to this pointing out the inky black sky petulantly, saying: “It’s raining!” But I couldn’t really argue with a stony: “What? Are you worried about getting wet?” The waves were crashing and the rain came down hard, but the body boarders and the surfers were unperturbed.

Camping in torrential rain and swimming in the sea meant, unsurprisingly, that neither we, nor anything we owned, was ever totally dry. Even lazily driving the short distance from our tent to the showers (as we did every day) didn’t work. And the yard and half leap from our vehicle to the tent could lead to damp discomfort within seconds, as I desperately scrabbled around to find the right zip to pull in the dark.

We hung the wetsuits over the car, laid the swimming costumes out under the awning, but woke up daily to find them wetter than before. Curling up in a warm sleeping bag didn’t help much either – particularly as my feet kept rolling into the puddle of rain that had got through our patch-up job.

After two days of horrific rain we were amazed to wake up to hazy blue skies and sunshine. We excitedly left the tent (a huge contrast to my reluctance to stop lurking in tent up to this point) and went out to enjoy the good weather. Returning several hours later we were alarmed to find that what had been a rather decent-sized hole had now became a crevasse. Apparently when gaffer tape dries out it contracts- in this case taking with it what was left of the tent’s plastic window.

Ever resourceful, we asked a fellow camper the forecast. Gale force winds and more rain, came the reply. Blast. As night and the water descended it soon became clear that a few heavy duty bin liners and yet more gaffer weren’t going to keep the floods at bay.

A long, damp and sleepless night, punctuated by noisy laughter and chatting from a neighbouring tent, followed and I began feeling like Alison Steadman’s character in ‘Nuts in May,’ as though my idyllic camping experience had been ruined by the boisterousness of other people.

Despite the weather I really enjoyed being in the fresh air. Although they weren’t always visible because of the mist, the views over Mortehoe Farm Campsite were beautiful. The best moment was catching sight of six seals hanging out on the sharp rocks at Morte Point, sunning themselves between showers and playing in the surf.

Much of our conversation was perpetuated by my musings as to the size and practicable nature of the surrounding tents, some of which had living rooms, separate bedrooms, kitchens and outside seating areas. They were amazing. Entire families holed up in the things for days, and despite the fact that the tent walls flapped perilously in the strong winds, I looked at them enviously from our (admittedly more taut) two-man tent.

I’m willing to try the camping thing again, just next time I’ll check the forecast sooner and perhaps invest in a four-bedroom tent with full-size beds. I just need to learn to light campfires and all the words to Kumbaya (not hard, I know) and maybe I’ll get into the spirit of the thing. Either that, or I’ll be sure to Google local B&Bs prior to departure.

Photo credit: A scene from Mike Leigh’s TV film ‘Nuts in May’

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