Campingninja Blog

With all the different tents you can see at campsites, there really is something for everyone.  From trailer tents and camper vans, to caravans, little pop up tents and 8 man palaces, big tents, small tents, and of course ninja tents too, there are many different styles of camping homes to choose from.  Now that's diversity.  And I don't mean as in the dance troupe (they're cool and everything but I'm much more of a Peridot fan myself).  

If it's true what they say about dogs looking like their owners, I wonder if the same applies to tents?  (That's tents that look like their owners, not tents that look like dogs!)...  Looking around our campsite, it does seem to be the case.

Proud owner of a tent that looks like you or not, as every camper knows, no matter how much you love your own tent, there's always another one at the campsite that catches your eye and admiration too.     

In amongst a field of tents encompassing decades of style – 70s cool and simplicity, tents with a little bit of an 80s flavour, and tents from the early 90s that can't help but remind you of a pair of Bermuda shorts – this one here would be my favourite today (as per ninja cam photo). 

To the tent of the day - a retro gem of a tent, and the tent to steal a ninja's heart away.

I say potato, you say potartoe. I say tomato, you say tomaytoe. They say RV, we say big campervan or motorhome. They had an alien, and I'm a ninja. Nonetheless, am loving the RV in the film 'Paul'!

It's just the ticket for these milder nights before the sunshine comes fully out of hibernation. We developed a bit of a taste for the RV after watching the film so Eric, Susie, Ellwood and I set off the next day to investigate. If you're not quite ready to buy one of these beasts and are worried that they may take more looking after than a hungry Tibetan Mastiff puppy, as we were, the simple solution is that you can hire an RV for your camping trip.

But before you're let loose at the hands of the wheel of one of these enormous beasts, they like you to do a test drive. A practise run around a few cones in the RV hire centre car park. Easy peasy.

But who was going to drive? A competitive game of rock, paper, scissors was the deciding factor. Our friend Susie won with a pair of scissors against 3 of us with paper. I shook my head in disbelief at the result. I should have known she'd opt for the scissors with Susie being a hairdresser.

We all piled into the RV and Susie, who tends to drive much like an alien anyway took to the wheel. We all braced ourselves, wishing we'd all chosen to be rocks.

Brmmmmm. The RV roared. I held on tight.

Straight over the top of the cones she went, crushing them beneath the mammoth wheels of the RV. All three of us in the back held our heads in our hands.

It wasn't long before we handed the keys back to the hire centre. On second thoughts, we thought we'd be better off sticking to the tents and regular camping for our next trip. And then we made a pact that the three of us would never again be paper in a game of rock, paper, scissors involving a crazy driving hairdresser!

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!)...