Done a lot of camping, the only person I've ever had cause to have words with was a guy at Comrie last year. May bank holiday weekend, fairly busy and all families on top field except this guy.
There were clouds of acrid smoke coming from his fire fit and drifting across the place. Went on for an hour or so. Really minging smoke. So had a word - he'd just dismantled his 40 year old garden shed and brought it in his van for firewood. Green paint shiplap, wet chipboard roof - the lot.
Don't be a fire pit ****er
Discussed with MrsRNP about only booking french campsites that didn’t have unisex toilets in future.
I hear both of them get booked up early.
I was in Ballater last year and this guy drives into the campsite in his Bentley then gets in a huge motorhome starts the engine and all the sides push out. It did beg the question did his man drive the motorhome up and he took the bentley and why did he not just book a hotel as I don't really see how he was actually camping in the motorhome.
My favourites from last camping trip were the family that arrived in two vehicles.
Big family car containing wife, children, dog, tent, etc, etc.
Works van containing husband and truely epically huge gas-fired BBQ.
I was well impressed!
The family with the drone who start buzzing over the campsite from dawn onwards - worse if there’s a camera attached as it will often take hours of trying to get the best shot for instagram.
Don’t be a fire pit ****
Some campsites become proper pea soupers come early evening, especially if there’s no wind.
We stayed on Les-Eaux in a static caravan, had a fab time, our van was right on the very edge of a cow field so much so they could potter right up to the window. I’d completely forgotten about this holiday. I’ll probably book for next year as I think I’ll be bankrupt.
@benpinnick are the other 10% aliens? Come on, let’s have some accurate statistics, it’s STW!
@benpinnick are the other 10% aliens? Come on, let’s have some accurate statistics, it’s STW!
I'll send the kids out to do a numberplate survey ... Belgians, Germans, a couple of Irish off the top of my head.
Camping near Coed y Brenin we met a young couple who behaved like boyfriend and girlfriend but looked like twins…
GoT has a lot to answer for
Often organises random 14 a side football games and farts like a RG500.
Are you sure it's not a CB500? If so it might be worth getting a doctor to check for an abscess.
As they say, abscess makes the fart go Honda.
One of my overriding memories of a caravan park was rolling into the one that surrounds the range complex at Lymphstone, 15-ish of us in MTP with weapons on the last leg of the RMQ course I was on. It was early, barely light and there was still an old lady, stick thin, wearing a dressing gown having a smoke outside her static next to the gas cylinders.
Christ knows what she thought of the chairborne rangers heading past her in a white fleet minibus.
Oh, and the couple having an argument while they are setting up the tent. Been that person just about every time I went camping with my ex-wife. In the end she just sat down and started drinking and left me and a neighbour to set up the tent.
...all this is why I don't camp, and certainly never in campsites which seem to combine all the damp, midgie, fiddly kit negatives of camping with the l'enfer c'est les autres vibe of hostels, the snoring, the dawn kids pan drumming competitions.
The only vague positive is that when walking past one I tend to find myself humming this desmond decker classic...
This is THE best thread in years!! 😀
I have a few favourites:
1. The couple who have clearly never camped before and have a load of kit along with no idea how to use it which invariably ends up in a massive row!
2. The one who is in and out of the car or van all the time and slams the doors rather than just leave them open. They must be in and out a 100 times which equals 100 slams of the doors! 🙂
3. The alternative hippy couple who are into weed and mushrooms.... i love talking to these types! Think psychedelic versions of Keith and Candice Marie from Nuts in May!
Campsites are a great place to people watch and its great to watch the site come alive in the morning with all the characters going to the ablutions block. I love how everyone says 'morning' too, you never normally get that other than camping!
I camped once in Tenby years ago and a full blown fight erupted between two groups where the police had to be called....there were women screaming and shouting, crying, blokes threatening to stab each other....the whole site just stood and watched it all....i don't know how you can get that angry camping personally!! 😀
EDIT: What is that about - fortifying your pitch with windbreaks? 🙂
Also, as someone alluded to further up - watching the middle classes camping is always great entertainment; humble bragging, reflected glory - it's all there!! I particularly love listening to middle class women prattle on in general, they are so funny and don't even realise it. God love 'em!! 😀
don’t forget the family with the 5 year old who appears from the tent naked from the waste down announcing that he’s going to have a bush wee just because he saw bingo do it on bluey.
oh, hang on. that’s my family!
my advice op, if you don’t like lower class people, go on better holidays.
have a load of kit along with no idea how to use it which invariably ends up in a massive row!
You know those three-compartment Decathlon 2" tents that take 2" to ping up but are really difficult to fold up even when you know how, you get one bit folded then it pings open as you try to do the next bit. I watched a family reading the instructions, struggling, reading the instructions, struggling some more. At the point they started to show irritiation I walked over "vous permettez". After a short fight I had it in the bag. As they were leaving the guy came over and gave us a bottle of wine.
I have a preference for campsites that have a gate that shuts out cars at 10 or 11 since staying on a Spanish site where a drunk ran over the end of our tent, only quick reflexes saved our legs. No cars at all is even better, one night we had a bloke next to us with a weak bladder who fired up the Mercedes at regular intervals through the night to drive the 100m to the toilet block. Click, beep beep, flashing lights, dagga dagga dagga, roar
I'm also on a french campsite with a similar makeup to Ben's
Tho we are in a eurocamp caravan , everyone super friendly on the site
Even the slightly odd French thrupple opposite who sat up drinking, listening to hip hop & chain smoking every night until 1 am
Came over last night as they were packing up & wife & I were enjoying a bottle of wine on the terrace once the kids were asleep, they gave us the contents of their freezer as they were leaving at midnight
Also we were treated to an epic lighting storm on Thursday
Light show tonight!
Great thread. I’m imagining many of us reading are, like me, presently on a campsite. 😀
The guy with the Defender with a roof-rack packed for the apocalypse. Either that or it has a tent-box. Both of those on ours right now.
Okay the guy who rocks up in a T7 and proceeds to pitch a minute high spec one/two person mountain tent too small to sit up in, when all around are massive collapsible fabric family bungalows. In Langdale one time. Post Fred whitton I think. Not me, a mate, I was godlike in a pod, tho actually it could well have been me years ago.
The French extended family where Grandmere produces an incredible 6 course lunch every day, laid out on an enormous family table, table cloths, comfy chairs, massive salads, wine, and everyone comes back from beach/pool/forest about 2pm and settles in for long lunch- wish my family was French……
Campsites are a great place to people watch and its great to watch the site come alive in the morning with all the characters going to the ablutions block. I love how everyone says ‘morning’ too, you never normally get that other than camping!
this is lovely.
i love the way you know that everyone knows that your are going for a poo on a campsite.
are the windbreakers around tents for privacy?
Love this thread. Camped this year and this guy rocks up in his BMW i8 Roadster. Of course the doors were splayed open to draw even more attention. Did love it when his fire pit smoke bellowed in one door and out the other. Looked like the bat car.
Love seeing all the bleary eyed people with hair all over the shop trudging to the shower block in the morning.
It’s a pretty bizarre place a campsite thinking about it!
This should be in a the Ladybird Book of Camping if it's not already.
First time parents in their mid 30s. Both wear high end branded active wear and smart haircuts. Their tent is a Teepee. Their trekking sandals cost over £150. They are pulling a 4 wheel flat trolley with a fat happy baby in who keeps trying to grab things but only succeeds in making everyone smile.
Middle class winker’s wife will be at the tent, staving off a wine hangover, dressed in oversized and well worn, expensively branded fleece top and thoroughly skanky PJ bottoms. Crocs optional. She will be coping stoically but deep down, the thought that her girlfriends were right and that she’d regret marrying Tobias is never far from the surface.
The ‘Temporary drunken commune’ comprising 3-5 family units, each with 2+ kids all pitched side-by-side. The plan clearly being the various children would just take care of themselves, while the parents get shit-faced together. There will be one falling out (shortly patched up), one lost and then found child drama, lots of sunburn and a minimum of 4 complaints by other campers when they’re still talking pissed nonsense, loudly at 2:15am…
It’s a pretty bizarre place a campsite thinking about it!
it appeals to people from all walks of life
The old lady well into her eighties who camped in a tiny Romahome camper van, totally self sufficient. We had a terrific storm at Keswick and she was found next morning in the toilet block fast asleep in her sleeping bag where she had seen the storm out. The couple earlier this year again at Keswick who had 2 parrots in cages in their camper van. The parrots were great, wolf whistling and generally entertaining. The couple however hardly left the van and seemed happy enough just being there. There seems to be a growing trend for flags on long fishing poles and fairy lights around awnings the flags nearly always regional or national! The lovely French couple in the alps several years ago who used to stay for most of the summer, they both had their set routines every day preparing meals, tidying and generally enjoying the caravanning life. Every evening the men would meet for a couple of hours and play boules in a very convivial manner, it was a pleasure to be there.
are the windbreakers around tents for privacy?
Territorial pissing, I expect.
And, I suppose, breaking wind. So to speak.
This should be in a the Ladybird Book of Camping
@binners get yer pens out.
Every evening the men would meet for a couple of hours and play boules in a very convivial manner
Reminds me of the time in Southern France when my Dad got roped into the campsite boules tournament. The old geezers found it hilarious until he failed to get knocked out early and revealed himself to be really quite good. Got a bit less convivial when the rosbif made the final. Fortunately didn't win and so avoided an international incident. I think the amount of Pastis he'd been supplied with started to do its job.
@molgrips me and my mates did pretty well in a campsite boules contest once. Between us we won some cash, wine and frites and were labelled ‘ses ong-leesh’ for the rest of the week.
one night we had a bloke next to us with a weak bladder who fired up the Mercedes at regular intervals through the night to drive the 100m to the toilet block. Click, beep beep, flashing lights, dagga dagga dagga, roar
Utterly mental.
Random shindig set up by the owners here near Kingsbridge. Listened to an Elvis impersonator earlier (the campsite owner/farmer) and now listening to a lad and girl from Dublin belting out some Pogues, Cranberries, Christy Moore and a bit of Irish Rebel Song magic. All while the crowds are getting pissed and eating pizza from a pizza oven guy. Love camping. 😂
This is all great, the ‘temporary drunken commune’ is like our annual get together! Off to Dolgellau/ Torrent Walk on Monday with another Dad and kids to eek out the last of the summer holidays.
Morning ablutions at Glenmore a couple of years ago. Get in early, there must be 7 cubicles in a row. I pick one in from end as end has a bit of a skidmark in the pan. Sit down to go about my business then hear someone walk in. They inevitably pick the cubicle right next to mine (never understand this).
After a bit of shuffling, grunting and straining all I hear in a soft whispered voice is "that was amazing".
I giggled and made sure to get out of there before he did.
OMG the toilet block, that’s another world entirely, the noises, the state they are left in, anecdotally the ladies block is waaay worse than the mens (if my wife’s observations are correct), who the heck can shower for 15 minutes plus, and I mean actually shower not undress, shower, dress, I can be in and out well within that. LOL at ^, must have been epic!
Oh don’t…. Love camping! Missus 34 weeks pregnant now so that’s stopped for a bit, trust me soon as we can we’ll be back on it!
Oh just the ones that are too loud…come on we’re all here, we don’t want to listen to you over everyone else…. Then the ones that are better setup than you. Always someone to learn from!
Will say this though, induction hobs with eggs and bacon on just after waking upto a sunny day with a hot brew… cooking outside, it’s up there as the best feeling especially with a STW mag to read
@dufresneorama Don't worry he was probably walking around in a post-jobbie bliss for half an hour afterwards anyway.
@chrisyork a what now? Electric hookups are for shed draggers.
Last time I went camping in a big group us men stayed in a hotel in the town and left the ladies to it. Really don't see the attraction of living like a hobo for a few days. Too many Glastonbury visits broke me.
This has had me thoroughly entertained for an hour reading this. Hilarious..
I can add a childhood trip to a French campsite where we were pitched next to a Dutch family who'd brought their inflatable speed boat thing with them. They were our best friends that week. The dad was also a driver of one of the few Porsche police interceptor cars the Dutch had at the time... I wanted him to adopt me!
That holiday my sister was also chased around by a suitor who she labelled "Pepe Le Pew" due to his constant irritating attempts to attract her attention...
Happy days...
I remember those Dutch police Porsches. Targas and the cops wore helmets.
#
The small girl in pyjamas and pink crocs at twilight, having an eppy coz there's a spider in the toilet!
.
& I'll add.. an Earwig in a tent is a terrible beast! 😩😂
Years ago was stopping at the Eric Byne site, went to the Robin Hood and got talking to a group up from London, one of which had his Abyssinian cat with him. Apparently it went all over the country with him, including an early morning walk up to Birchen Edge, about 10m to our left bounding through the undergrowth. It could solo quite well too.
Tom's Field was entertaining, not least the night the right-on couple next door, who expressed every middle class hippy cliche, put the cherry on the cake by her letting the whole campsite know that he was performing at least adequately with an increasingly voluble 'Yes, Yes'. There was a lot of childish s****ing from those who couldn't get to sleep. Next morning they were sat outside, reading the Guardian, like nothing had happened while everyone around was very British and made pleasant conversation with them whilst avoiding eye contact.
I just accept I'm the weird one and enjoy the people watching whenever I camp, makes it far more relaxing and fun. Although observing DofE groups and new campers of various types is hilarious and worrying at the same time. When the two groups combine it's the best hour or so of entertainment imaginable.
This is a random one but I’ll always remember it. Two blokes turning up to a campsite in Edale in separate cars. Only the cars were Aston Martin Cygnets (a £30-35k Toyota iQ with Aston badging). Pitched a tiny tent and disappeared the next day.
That was the one at that odd camp site wasn't it? I remember arriving just as they were leaving and you just pointing at them as I got my tent out.
Off to Dolgellau/ Torrent Walk on Monday with another Dad and kids to eek out the last of the summer holidays.
One of my favourite sites ever. Was there early in the season one year and the ducks had just started taking their kids out for a wander early each morning. Was great fun watching them muck about in the little stream's pond by the farmhouse. By my third morning there (of 5) the ducklings had learned that I would feed them as I was having my breakfast so I was greeted by a dozen of them stood there waiting patiently as I got up to brush my teeth!
Not counting festival camping, for fairly obvious reasons, I’ve only ever been away camping once. A little site at the top of a steep field in South Hams, Devon, with a short stretch of hedge dividing it into two, a stand pipe in the hedge for fresh water, and a small breeze-block toilet block at one end with two loos and wash hand basins. £10/night, cash in an honesty box, I spent nine nights there, with a couple of camper vans the other side of the hedge divider for a couple of days. No untoward noises, hardly saw the other folks while they were there, I had a small wood-burning stove, a kettle, a pile of dry wood scavenged from the hedge and the beach, an axe and a small chopping block, and a small pile of books.
It was heavenly, peace and quiet, a continually simmering kettle for endless mugs of tea, sat reading my books, with a view across Start Bay towards Dartmouth harbour.
I shall have to do it again sometime, now I’ve got a much bigger tent with a very much bigger self-inflating mattress.
Peace. Quiet. No other people.
The view…
Although observing DofE groups and new campers of various types is hilarious and worrying at the same time.
🙂
I love the DoE kids, they just give me hope for the future.
We were at The Royal Oak site in Hurdlow earlier this year* and got chatting to a great bunch. Several kids with learning disabilities amongst them. The support and care shown by their peers was just extraordinary.
Kids today are, in general, much more switched on than we were at that age.
*Great site. Try the Steak and Stilton pie in the boozer.
🤣 ohhh you mean PROPER camping with no electric! I confess not done much of that, we take a plug-in coolbox too, got to have away of keeping the bacon and milk and salad cool!
Marthrown of Mabie is worth a visit if you love MTB, riding straight from the tent and you really want to get back to nature!
So peaceful up there and there’s something about looking over at a gorgeous vista while you’re weeing onto a haybale for a toilet, the compost loos were pretty impressive too!
I could forgo the outside shower though which had what appeared to be a combi-boiler to heat the water. It was windy and the pilot light kept going out, so I turned the gas up, gust of wind came and I kid you not a lick of flame shot out and up around 2ft high….sooo close to cooking my nether regions! Never happened to anyone else!
They have what I think is a wood fired hot pool too but we absolutely didn’t use it last time due to the green colour inside, looked like you’d get a Urine infection from it 😆
My best mate and I, as teenagers, would share family camping stories every September. All the normal bland stuff from him and sounding just like my summers
Then in his 20s be drops a bomb shell.
All his family holidays were naturist! It’s the gift that keeps on giving, even 30 years later.
“Si your whole family played tennis together nude”
“Yes”
The same for swimming, going round the campsite shop etc.
He says the one that really hurt was the fish hook through the thigh. Now clearly the stakes were much higher nude but the meat and 2 veg were fine.
But he was taken to hospital. He had a 4 hour trolley wait in the corridor will of a busy French hospital. He was 14 and completely nude. He said it was really traumatic……
A campsite on the east coast of Oz near the Whitsundays many years ago. Sweaty angry youth wearing a wifebeater and dreads (me) is trying to fix a new door handle into our aging Falcon so we can actually get in the passenger side without having to slide across. Its 35 degrees and I keep dropping important bits into the door whilst needing 3 hands. After one last screw drops into the abyss I sit back and let forth an absolute volley of obscenity only to sit back and see a prim well dressed woman and her husband looking at me from the campervan next door.
With a bit more swearing I get the job done and just as Im finishing I see her walking up to me. Great someone coming to complain about my language thats all I need……She then hands me a cold beer and an envelope. You look like you could use a drink and a treat…perhaps you and your partner might be able to use this - my daughter won it in a quiz last night but we have to leave today. It was a day trip on a classic yacht out to an uninhabited island, luxury lunch and snorkling on the reef. Probably one of the best days sailing We’ve had. Still talk about it 26 years later!
campsites - I luv em
Dutch people.
with their own supply of potatoes and hagelslag (sugary sprinkles they pour over everything).
all I hear in a soft whispered voice is “that was amazing”.
Poogasm
They inevitably pick the cubicle right next to mine (never understand this).
After a bit of shuffling, grunting and straining all I hear in a soft whispered voice is “that was amazing”.
I giggled and made sure to get out of there before he did.
Are you sure he was on his own?
Stayed at a campsite in Glencoe recently and a couple of nights before we left,a couple set up a modern teepee style tent.
The bloke looked like some kind of Viking reinactment character, all in animal skins for a waistcoat and they had loads of big skins of various shades to keep them warm at night.
I imagined that they probably used to sleep inside a mooses stomach lining or something but perhaps the partner had insisted on a small concession to comfort, hence the modern teepee. 😊
Campsite in Gassin:
Mariane. Alcoholic ex-singer who walks to the bin enclosure naked.
All his family holidays were naturist! It’s the gift that keeps on giving, even 30 years later.
“Si your whole family played tennis together nude”
“Yes”
The same for swimming, going round the campsite shop etc.
I get it for swimming and sunbathing, beach activities but I never really got the allure of doing normal things nude and especially not with the family 🙂
Then in his 20s be drops a bomb shell.
All his family holidays were naturist! It’s the gift that keeps on giving, even 30 years later.
A good mate of mine once drunkenly admitted that his parents had taken for a week at a naturist site when he was about 14, to try and make sure he had no hang ups around nudity.
He was obviously traumatised.
I’ll be camping at End Of The Road festival this weekend, in the Quiet camping area, I’ll let you know what sort of neighbours I have.
I am pretty confident that they won’t be anything like the assholes at Reading and Leeds who were setting fire to tents over last weekend, and left hundreds, if not thousands of tents behind. #rollseyes
The Two Geoffs.
I did loads of camping with mum & dad when I was a kid & loved it (probably why I can’t stand it now) & we used to go to the same site in the Lakes. High Bridge End next to Thirlmere. I’m talking mid 1960’s. Anyway, there was always 2 guys together whenever we went, both called Geoff. Or it might’ve been Geoff & Jeff, who knows?
All his family holidays were naturist!
We went on a family caravanning holiday around France when I was in my teens. On our last day in Brittany there was something quite deceptive about the weather and we all managed to get really, really badly sunburned. Had an uncomfortable journey down to the Cote Savage trying to contort outsides into the shadows cast by the cars door pillars to arrive at our next campsite. Which was in flat boring woodlands, next to flat boring dunes leading to an expansive featureless flat boring beach and nothing really to do for miles around. So the only thing to really do each day was go and sit on the beach.... which it turned out was a Naturist beach.
Being so burnt we were sat there with long sleeves, collars up, socks on, and big hats feeling weirdly conspicuous
At one point my mum wondered aloud "So where they keep their car keys?"
All his family holidays were naturist!
Waaah! Brilliant
We have been camping quite a few times but still have very little equipment. I can't work out how people manage to pack so much stuff! Camp beds double as seating etc.
Best camp set up I have seen was a black Jeep Wrangler with a black roof tent and everything packed in black flight cases! Swiss couple.
Best camp set up I have seen was a black Jeep Wrangler with a black roof tent and everything packed in black flight cases! Swiss couple.
Saw quite a few roof tent set ups recently. Some fairly elaborate. Just thought it must be a royal pain if you actually want to drive anywhere during your stay 🤔
My outlaws have one of these (an older model) slide-on style campers. We call it the Tardis because it's so spacious. They take about two minutes to set up and set down when you arrive at a campsite/side of the road and are easy to slide off and store in the shed.
https://activecampers.com.au/
Currently camping near Barnard Castle and recognising a lit of these stereotypes...
and left hundreds, if not thousands of tents behind. #rollseyes
Quite a lot of festivals encourage you to leave tents which are then donated to charities.
Daughter was at a European gymnastics event in July in Switzerland where they had taken mats and sleeping bags as they were sleeping at local schools, and they were encouraged to leave them for local homeless/refugee charities.
Im not the weird one this morning. A retired french couple on a mountain tandem with trailer. He has a magnificent moustache. She has a magnificent afro.
Nice folk tho
We were at coldstream at the weekend with family, not real humdingers, but the guy walking around with his eye mask on top of his baldy head as he'd obviously forgotten it was there was quite amusing.
There were some massive set ups though, blow housing estates with blow up sofas, exterior lighting and what looked like a blow up double bed complete with headboard!
urban myth perpetuated by the terminally idle to justify their laziness.Quite a lot of festivals encourage you to leave tents which are then donated to charities.
If you pack away the tent neatly & take it home with you, [I]then[/I] you can donate it to charity upon your return. Think about it... no-one is trawling Glastonbury, assessing thousands of discarded tents for viability, re-uniting all the constituent parts and re-packing them neatly in a carry case (which probably no longer exists anyway). Anything left out just goes to landfill.
Quite a lot of festivals encourage you to leave tents which are then donated to charities.
urban myth perpetuated by the terminally idle to justify their laziness.
Not just tents anyway.
'kin R. Soles. 😡
Reading
People seem to think because they are paying to be at a venue, that it means that they can dump their shit anywhere. Doesn't take too much for the average person to translate that to the general environment sadly.
I personally think selling these Festival kits just encourages this appalling trend.
I think that's worse than normal as people got out pretty quickly this weekend when R.Soles started setting fire to tents.
All his family holidays were naturist!
Waaah! Brilliant
We have been camping quite a few times but still have very little equipment.
Then I'd personally avoid naturist campsites
Even when I was at a festival with an el cheapo Millets tent, cost £75, it came home with me, and is the one in the photo above; now it’s a £190-odd Decathlon Air Seconds inflatable, along with a 10cm self-inflating mattress and a footprint groundsheet. About £300, but looking at some of the bigger tents in the photo above they can’t have been *that* cheap, although if it’s a party who all chipped in then pretty cheap per person.
It’s a different crowd who go to Reading/Leads, more dance and stuff, who don’t have the same mindset as people who go to Glastonbury, Greenman, EOTR, etc.
I was talking to a lass who works in the little cafe/restaurant in town I’m a regular at, and she was at Reading. Her and her friends left before the end on Sunday, because they were so frightened at what was kicking off, they were almost running, heads down, hands on top of their heads because people were throwing chairs, bottles all sorts of rubbish.
Seems not much has changed there, from when I went in the 70’s, there were Party 7 beer cans being thrown around, and those were steel, bottles full of piss, 7” vinyl singles that were given away as promos being thrown like frisbees.
Having said that, when I went again in the 90’s, Bjork was a headliner, Foo Fighters played their first gig in the U.K., and the atmosphere was very relaxed.
Chap at Coniston Hall campsite in Aug 2020 set up next to the toilet and shower block, fire going, wellies on and literally chatting and joking to every single person who walked past.
Was very jealous of his massive, dry and warm set up.
Camped circa 1993 at St Andres des Alpes in deepest Provence. Up rolls a cold war vintage Skoda, Autrian plates, three guys with Village People moustaches and bottle end glasses, one woman. Campsite was kept awake that night by the sounds of alfresco bonking that seemed to migrate round the campsite over the course of several hours. Folk in the campsite weren't massively impressed tbh. Several days later we rolled up at a campsite several hundred kms away only to be greeted by the selfsame team. We were even less impressed.
I love the DoE kids, they just give me hope for the future
Got to agree I love seeing them trudging along with some huge backpack with wellies and handbag strapped on top but giving it a go and enjoying it. I only bumped into a set on a campsite once in mid Wales where we learnt them a lighter but it was cool to see their excitement in the drizzle.
Eskdale last weekend
* German couple in an expedition spec Unimog, parked as close as humanely possible to the shop and toilet block
* achingly cool black land rover with a roof tent
* gangsta spec white range rover parked next to a festival's worth of camping kit requiring an additional trailer to carry it
* an infinite number of VW campers*
we arrived on sunday and pitched next to two VW campers, they left on monday and were replace with two vw campers...
Dubbed Out Community types - VW van, MASSIVE awning, blow up 3-peice suite, windbrake, flag on a fishing pole, wearing DryRobes
Love this thread 🙂
First time camping with my wife down in Cornwall, spent one night listening to a bloke a few tents away badly singing along to the entirety of Coldplay's "A rush of blood to the head" album at the TOP OF HIS VOICE from about 10:30 pm to 11:30
A few years later somewhere in east Devon, camped on a completely empty site (owner was just about to close it as he had no bookings): nice big field with a few molehills. One old giffer and his dog arrived a few days later an did that thing where they decided to pitch their tent not too close to us but close enough in a huge field. Bloke seemed pleasant enough but one morning while eating our breakfast he wandered over to near our tent holding a hammer, crouched down next to a molehill, waited a few minutes and then proceeded to bludgeon to death a mole while we looked on aghast. He mumbled "I hate moles" and then wondered back to his tent...
I see quite a few DoE kids stumbling around the trails looking knackered, in various different stages of exhaustion/euphoria. We were camping at Brow Farm near the Long Mynd and a load turned up, knackered but in high spirits, it was great. They were noisy until about 9pm then dead quiet.
@trailmonkey Actually, we all had a lovely time.
This thread reads like the lyrics from a HalfManHalfBiscuit album!
I see quite a few DoE kids stumbling around the trails looking knackered, in various different stages of exhaustion/euphoria. We were camping at Brow Farm near the Long Mynd and a load turned up, knackered but in high spirits, it was great. They were noisy until about 9pm then dead quiet.
Brilliant, innit?
This year's camps were rather pleasant. Fire was only to smoke the midges out.
Once had a load of DoE kids turn up at a campsite we were on at the longmynd.
They all went to bead at about 7.30.
Heard them complaining the next morning to the supervisors that the couldn't sleep because the sheep were too noisy.😂
LittleMissMC is doing her Bronze expedition next weekend. She's anxiously looking at long range forecasts.
Angry single mum with embarrassed 8 year old son (me) in an ancient ridge tent (canvas with steel poles, round ends), busy campsite.
All instructions offered at the top of her voice. ie: "NICHOLAS, FETCH THE DOG LEAD, IT'S IN THE BELL-END".
