Campingninja Blog

We were playing one of my favourite camping games earlier when I got myself into a right tangle. I know I'm a ninja and everything but I don't think I was built for left leg and right arm blue with left arm stretched all out to green and right leg trying to balance on yellow.

Am I talking a load of gobbledegook? Nooooooo, I'm talking about a game of Camping Twister of course!

They say that it's the day after the day after that hurts the most, so I reckon in 2 days time that's when I'm really going to feel the pain!

So if you think you're as tough as a ninja, or even tougher than a ninja (not really possible but we can pretend) and fancy having a go yourself, then here's how...

Collect up all your camping plates, even go and do the washing up if you need to, because this game is good fun. Lay the plates out on the grass, either neatly in colour coordinated rows or tossed onto the ground randomly, depending on your personality. I like a combination of both personally – the reassurance of a nice orderly line of blue, with a single yellow thrown in for that ever exciting element of surprise. If you have a lot of players, or you suffer from we-only-own-2-plates syndrome, then you can use your camping bowls too. The minimum number of players is 2 and for best results use 3 or more. The maximum number of players all depends on how many plates and bowls you can muster up but the possibilities are endless.

Allocate one player as the caller. They need to be blindfolded or with their eyes shut or facing the other way, or if you're me, then I just pull my ninja head scarf down over my eyes. I can't see like that, really I can't. I know sometimes in the past people have thought that I've been cheating, but when they asked me how many fingers they were holding up and I said 11, they knew that there was no way I could see out. 

Once you've ascertained that the caller can't see any of the plates, and have performed any anti-cheat checks that you need to, get the caller to randomly call out a colour, direction and a limb. C, D, L. Simple. Then comes the tricky part, as the players get themselves into turmoil twisting about trying to put their hands and feet onto the colours that the caller shouts out. It's not easy, well, unless you happen to be an olympic gymnast that is!

The winner is the last one standing, if you can call it standing that is. So, let's say that the winner is the last one to remain in an upright tangle, as opposed to having fallen down between the plates and bowls in a twisted heap.

And there you have it, Camping Twister. A bit like the regular game of Twister but with an added twist.

You can play it at home too, but it's always a better game when you're camping – more space to move about and unlike when you're playing it in your garden back home, you don't find yourself having to explain yourself to your next door neighbour who is peering over the fence, when you end up saying 'yes, I am aware that my hand is stuck in a small plastic bowl' to Maude from number 65 – camping is so much more relaxed than that and so perfect for this game.

That by the way is one of the pitfalls of playing with a mix of plates and bowls. I probably should have mentioned that earlier but hey, we all learn from our mistakes. I don't try and put my size 11 feet into my breakfast bowl any more. Well apologies to anyone who has got their hand stuck in one of the bowls before I mentioned this anyway! Oh, and while I'm on the subject of safety – plates (and small bowls with hands stuck in them) came become exceedingly slippery in wet weather – both on the plate surfaces themselves and the plates against wet grass. So it's a good idea to be prepared to get muddy!

And that's it. Camping Twister in a nutshell. Enjoy!

According to the man in the beach shop, it's amazing what you can find in the ocean off the coast of Devon. So I bought myself a snorkel and it came free with a Grockle snorkeller's check list for the south west coast. A complete bargain!

The water's a little bit cold and choppy today but let's see what I can find on my snorkeller's check list...

Seaweed – check

Hermit crab – check

Some kind of spiky rock (Ouch!) – yes, check!

Sand – check

Sand again – already checked

And more sand – check

Some feet – hmmm, not on the list to check … wait a minute, they're my feet!

Sand again – check again

Shells - check

Octopus??!! - time for me to get out quick I think!!!

One of my favourite things about camping on a warm summers evening is the 'cricket cricket' chirping sounds that the Crickets make at night. That's when you really know you're away camping. There's something strangely comforting about the tropical sound, which would in other circumstances, be a very annoying noise, if we weren't outdoors, under canvas and beneath the stars. 

But tonight there was one noise that was so much louder than the rest. One cricket definitely making his voice heard. I think he had his cricket mic turned up too high. It was so loud I couldn't get to sleep.

Admittedly at the time and in my tired state, I did feel a little like just shouting from the tent at him to hop off, but that would have been rude. So I went out into the night and politely asked the noisy neighbour if he'd mind keeping the noise down.

As it turned out, he was a very nice cricket, who goes by the name of Jiminy (I probably should have expected that really!).

Well, all quiet now and I'm off to sleep. Goodnight. Sweet ninjas everyone.

I hired a little rowing boat on the river by the campsite today and ended up rowing myself around in circles! It's definitely not as easy as it looks and I don't think I was doing myself any favours trying to use the same technique that I use for the rowing machine at the gym! I got a bit flustered and in the spin of things I accidentally dropped an oar into the water, which incidentally began to rapidly float away from me, ushered away by the current.

The relaxing afternoon on the river that I had imagined wasn't quite going to plan. And the strangest thing of all was that when I leant over the side of the boat to try and catch the missing oar, I peered into the water and there was another ninja right there, like me, looking back up at me!! It was like twins! Very weird.

Following on from yesterdays flip flop incident, we decided to launch a full investigation into what really went on, with a game of Camping Cluedo to finally get to the bottom of it all.

It was one of those very tense situations when everybody suspected each other and yet I remained calm, confident in my own innocence. That was, until Suzie opened her mouth and spoke the dreaded words; 'I suggest that the flip flop incident was carried out in the billiard tent by Colonel Mustard aka the Camping Ninja, with the tent peg'.

The words echoed through the campsite, on and on, reaching far, until they suddenly hit me and
I realised what she had just said!

Huh? Someone actually thought it could have been me? The audacity!! Her words pierced my very Camping Ninja existence like a knife. Just because I happened to be wearing (Colonel) mustard colour socks I was suddenly a suspect. How could she make such an assumption? 
I thought we were friends but I guess it's every man or ninja for himself in this game.

Right that's it. My turn and I'll say it with a French accent like Poirot because it sounds much better.
'I suggest that le flip flop incident was carried out in the kitchen tent by Madam Peacock aka Suzie with the camping gas'.

And then right at that moment it happened again in front of our very own eyes. A real live peacock strutted up to the tent and went to the toilet on the flip flops!

Well, there wasn't really much to be said after that. That was the end of our Cluedo game and fortunately with all our names cleared too, the end of all our suspicions. It had been the peacock all along. Not a bad attempt on the detective skills front though - the clue was all in the peacock, and the gas if you like, although thankfully on the gas theme, it only left a 'number 1'! 

When I got up this morning I noticed something wet and very suspect on one of my flip flops left outside the tent last night. Eeuuw!

It hadn't rained in the night so I wondered what it was. Could it be that somebody or something had misinterpreted the flip flop and toilet joke on the Campingninja Essential Camping Packing List when they read it?

Flip flops – great for the shower and or getting up and going to the loo in the night (no, not in the flip flops – they're just easy to put on).

I hope not, but I'm not going to risk it and put them on. I think I'll play it safe for today and just wear some different shoes. Although after already loosing one Croc in the river the other week and now this has happened to my flip flops, I do seem to be a bit unlucky on the shoe front!

You'll never guess what pulled up and parked in the pitch next to us today. Our new neighbours arrived in an old Renault R4 camping van. Have never seen one of those before!

What a great set of camping gadgets. For anyone who ever said camping isn't luxurious, think again. It must be what you'd call ultimate glamper-vanning! Maybe next time we go camping we'll hire one of those. It's not just all about tents you know!

To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, when they unpacked and set up their camp it went a little something like the first few moments of this (which I think loosely translates into English as; this is what camper vans used to be like in the old days!)...