Why do we like camping? - It may seem like a silly question but is it? The Guardian don't think so as they have published an
with that very title which sparked some comment and debate.
To many people camping may seem, well, completely insane and the very notion of voluntarily putting up a tent, sleeping in it and trying to re-create as many of the comforts you have at home in a field seems utterly ridiculous. My experiences on a recent camping trip in the Lake District sum up the, what some might call, farcical nature of camping (still love it though).
A group of us were camping up in the Lake District in May and Rory's parents came to visit us from Scotland - they were staying in a B&B down the road (sensible) but we had invited them to our campsite for the afternoon for a bbq. The following is a series of true events which unfolded:
- Decide to have a bbq.
- Realise we have nothing resembling a bbq or anything to put on a bbq but decide to plough ahead none-the-less.
- Order bbq meat pack at campsite from local butcher (pretty much our best move of the day).
- Find an old wheel at the campsite which we decide is perfect for putting charcoal in for our bbq.
- Drive to Keswick to buy supplies - parking and getting around = a nightmare due to Keswick Mountain Festival being in full flow.
- Faff about between unfamiliar shops trying to buy fish, salad, charcoal and other sundries.
- Realise that even though we have a bbq of sorts we have nothing to put the food on - no grill.
- Alex drives back to the campsite to see what she can muster up.
- I traipse around Keswick looking for a hardware store / cook shop which sells cake cooling trays.
- Meanwhile Alex roots around in an old skip back at the campsite / farm.
- Just as I'm about to annoyingly purchase an overpriced flimsy metal rack I get a call from Alex - she has found a manky, rusty old grill which has been discarded by someone - hooray.... needs a bit of work, but hooray indeed!
- Alex spends the next 45 mins scrubbing aforementioned grill using soap, sugar and an old sponge.
- We get back to the campsite and set the chairs up around the wheel come bbq.
- Rory's parents relax with a warm shandy and watch.
- We light the charcoal.
- We make numerous trips to and from the car to get essential things - chopping boards, knives, plates, openers, bread etc etc.
- We flap newspaper about the bbq to get it going.
- We realise the beer we have is near boiling point as it has been sitting in the car all day on the hottest day of the year.
- We come up with ingenious plan to put beers in a bucket of water hanging by the hedge to cool them down.
- We relight the bbq (it went out during the beer episode).
- We chop up salads and vegetables kneeling in the grass.... and get grass in everything.
- We go back and forward to the hedge to check the beers in the futile hope one my turn cold.
- We wander back and forward to the campsite tap to fill up water bottles.
- More bbq flapping.
- Eventually we sit down ready to cook on our shiny new grill.
- The sausages almost immediately set on fire when the fat pours out.
- We try and move them but the cheap bbq utensils we bought melt apart as soon as they are near anything resembling heat so we resort to shiifting meat about the grill using plastic knives and forks and singeing any arm hair we ever may have had.
- We run to the hedge to get the bucket of, now very warm, water to try and dowse the flames.
- Finally we're ready to eat and we sit down, plastic plates on laps, warm beers in hand and proceed to saw through the slightly over-cooked minute steak with our woefully inadequate plastic knives.
- Once finished we sit back and declare we've had a lovely bbq.
Now, Rory's parents chuckled at us all the way through and afterwards said they thought we were mad with all our efforts and rushing about but they noticed we really seemed to be enjoying ourselves - they wondered why?
We thought about it and realised that it is something about feeling a bit self-sufficient, about having to be a bit resourceful (we know we're not talking Ray Mears here). If we'd cooked the very same thing at home we would never have had to have worked it all out and toiled a bit; and we certainly would have never felt the triumph of finding a grill pan, which was frankly a health and safety hazard, and resurrecting it from its landfill fate; it would have all been, frankly, a bit boring. The food tasted a lot sweeter because we had been on an, albeit ridiculous, journey to get there.
Rory's parents never want to go camping themselves, but they would be very happy to come and watch us camp any day.