Picture the scene: a field somewhere in the Midlands on a Tuesday evening. It has rained continuously for seven hours. You are in a tent that took 45 minutes and three minor altercations to erect. Inside, there is no room to stand. You are sitting on a bare groundsheet, shivering, staring at an unopened tin of beans and sausages with a broken ring pull. A friend, whose idea this was, is somewhere nearby — in their tent, also rethinking the collective decision to sleep in a field.
With Easter out of the way, we are now heading face-first into another camping season. The industry enjoyed an enormous boom on the back of the pandemic, though according to the Great Britain Tourism Survey, the number of camping, glamping and caravan trips taken in England has now fallen by nearly a quarter since 2022. We are, it seems, coming to our senses. This year, however, may be slightly different. With the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz threatening Europe’s jet fuel supply, the week away in Puglia that many of us were counting on may not materialise.
I am a recent (and regretful) contributor to the camping industry. I must be clear: I didn’t go into the trip blindly. I knew full well that camping and I were fundamentally incompatible. Call me a snob, but my idea of fun isn’t spending a week pretending that I live in a field. But I went, largely because there is always, buried somewhere in the reasonable adult brain, the faint belief that this time will be different. That the fresh air and lack of Wi-Fi will do something. Unlock something. That you will return, as the camping evangelists always suggest you will, new and improved.
Reader, this was not the case. It never is. I was the same person I had always been, with all the same thoughts and anxieties I had brought with me from home — I was just also cold, hungry, and sitting on the ground. Aspirations of channelling my inner Swallows and Amazons were incredibly short-lived. Just like the Arthur Ransome characters, I had constructed a vision of myself as plucky, resourceful, and at one with the elements. It transpired — after my being defeated by some tangled guy ropes — that I am none of these things.
This is the central lie of camping, and it is a remarkably well-maintained one: that removing yourself from your house will remove you from yourself. It will not. You will continue to be you wherever you go. In my case, it wasn’t the house that was the problem. I brought the problem with me, neatly decanted into a Karrimor rucksack.
There is also the specific architectural misery of camping that nobody ever seems to discuss
There is also the specific architectural misery of camping that nobody ever seems to discuss. As well as there being very little to do, there is nowhere to be. However modest a house, it offers a basic geography of purpose. Even a small flat is split up into individual rooms, each with its own function and the psychological treat of somewhere to go that is different from where you are. A tent doesn’t offer this. The one room on offer is too small to spend conscious time in, and the six square feet of canvas porch that exists between the tent and the outside world is a space that isn’t fit to serve any purpose beyond storing wet boots.
And, of course, there is the rain. Any pleasure that can be squeezed from camping vanishes the moment the weather turns. The great outdoors — the reason for going camping — becomes inaccessible.
When it comes to bedtime, you lie on an inflatable mattress that begins deflating the second it is in use, and by 2 am, is no longer a mattress. Getting to sleep at all is no easy feat. This is largely due to every sleeping bag, jacket, and carelessly packed carrier bag within a six-foot radius announcing itself at full volume every time you even consider moving an inch.
There is also the fear for one’s safety. Fundamentally, a tent is a single layer of canvas that separates its owner from the outside world, providing a level of security comparable to that of a shower curtain. Anything that fancies joining you in the night for a quick cuddle, murder, or both is able to do so with relative ease.
If you are lucky enough for unconsciousness to free you from the hell of the whole experience, it lasts approximately 45 minutes before you wake, stiff and mildly damp, to begin the thought cycle all over again. Manage to survive until morning, and you will wake cripplingly dehydrated and — almost inexplicably, given that it dropped to three degrees in the night — sweating. The tent, now in direct sunlight, has become a greenhouse. It is 5:52 am.
This all takes place in conditions of forced intimacy with strangers. Camping is billed as the antidote to the hustle and bustle of life; a return to a quiet communion with nature, with no technology or people. From my limited experience, this just isn’t the case. What it actually delivers is your neighbour’s 6 am radio alarm, the cooking smells from 12 surrounding pitches, and a level of auditory access to the lives of strangers that you did not request and will not easily forget.
I am aware that there are people who love camping, those who return from it visibly restored and talk about it with such fondness that I don’t believe it is an act. I don’t dispute their experience; I was simply unable to find this pleasure.
What I did find was the M40 back to Oxford. Never had the uncomplicated pleasure of a chair, the opportunity to wash, and a bed that remains a bed, been more welcome. Some experiences teach you something new about yourself. This one merely confirmed what I already knew. I hate camping.
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