As we huddle over the fold-out table, woolly throws wrapped around our lower bodies in a futile attempt at keeping warm, while the wind howls and the canvas around us billows, it’s a question we ask ourselves. What is the joy of camping?
Preparation for bed (sleeping bags) involves braving the elements to make our way to the shower block, admittedly only thirty yards away, filling up with water, emptying bladders, brushing teeth etc before getting wind and rain-blasted on the return journey. Zipping down to get in, zipping up again, zipping down the ‘doors’ to the tent’s bedroom (sleeping area), zipping them up again, getting undressed as quickly as possible before cocooning in our sleeping bags, using the throws as blankets for extra warmth. At midnight in June in Pembrokeshire, it feels like Siberia in winter. Sleep comes … intermittently. The howling wind does its best to keep us awake. When it abates, the noise from the nearby road takes over. There isn’t much traffic, but for some reason traffic noise is amplified, maybe because of a general lack of trees to muffle sound. The greatest cause of sleep deprivation is the cold. We’ve got the gear, and we’re even on an air mattress, but it’s still cold.
Contrastingly, when I wake in the morning, I’ve been transported to a Turkish sauna. There’s no air, and the heat is intensely oppressive. Sweat gushes from every pore. We unzip the tent’s flaps as quickly as possible, letting oxygen and a little freshness in before I head to the shower/toilet block pronto to relieve a bladder that’s been urging me to go for the last hour.
Next to the block, the sun glints off a pond surrounded by tall reeds. In the centre, two ducks create Vs on the glassy surface while a moorhen chirps and squeaks from somewhere deep within the bullrushes.
I wash raspberries and strawberries and fill the Moka coffee pot from a ‘drinking water’ tap at the side of the block, then set up the one-ring gas stove, not too close to the tent’s entrance in case there’s a risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. This isn’t something I was particularly worried about until I saw all the warning labels attached to the canvas, near to the one that warned the entrance was a trip hazard. Tenting is a more dangerous business than I remember.
After a cold and windy night, it is a gloriously sunny and warm morning; perfect for an al fresco breakfast of berries, granola, Welsh Greek Yoghurt, milk, and Pembrokeshire honey on the picnic table that is part of our pitch.
Camping under canvas takes effort. Despite being a number of steps up from when, way back, we first started camping in what was basically a festival tent, it isn’t what I’d call comfortable. We’ll return home exhausted.
Why do it? Maybe there’s something about the simplicity of living this way, albeit very briefly, that makes us appreciate more the comforts of modern living. Maybe there’s something about the lack of labour-saving amenities that harks back to a more innocent, less consumerist, way of life.
And maybe it’s because when I close my eyes and feel the sun on my face and inhale the aroma of freshly brewed coffee on the camp fire, I can imagine I’m a character in a Cormac McCarthy novel, moseying my way across the plains.
There’s something exhilarating, raw, and even romantic about camping under canvas that makes it incredibly addictive and, yes, enjoyable.
