Camping: why do I persist? Why do I regularly, voluntarily, drive six hours to a wet field so that other people can hear me shout at my children? I only have to unpack my tent to see how much of a hurry I was in to get home last time. Among the folds and tangled guy ropes I find a musty child's sock, a distressed Grazia cover from 2009, an old crisp packet and a hat I forgot I ever owned. And yet, despite these warnings from history, I'm actually excited about the idea of putting up my tent. Again.
Not everybody, I can see, is as excited as I am when I arrive. "It's quite weird," says one anonymous G2 camper into her phone. "But I can't really talk about it because I'm at a campsite and everyone can hear me." Resolute non-camper Lucy Mangan is also on her phone, looking utterly bereft. She's been here for 20 minutes.
Across the site there is a wide range of skills on display. Some people obviously camp a lot; they packed light and remembered to bring a mallet. Others have clearly borrowed tents that they have never put up before. Some have come with large family tents they have never been obliged to erect singlehanded. Amid all the struggles it's easy to forget that this is the fun bit.
These problems are not mine. My Scandinavian tent may have the footprint of a bouncy castle, but I can put it up alone and I am practised at banging in tent pegs with a log. Soon a little tent city emerges – Camp G2 – clustered round an enormous tipi we've hired for our 24-hour stay at Wowo, the upscale campground (but not too upscale; it's not carpeted or anything) near Haywards Heath in Sussex. There's also a well equipped yurt hidden among the trees. It has a woodburning stove and spoons.
Camping was supposed to be one of those dowdy pastimes that became perversely fashionable for a moment, only to become just as unfashionable again once everybody tried it and found out what it actually entailed. But camping hasn't gone away; it's more popular than ever. Thanks to the recession, camping and caravan trips last year were up 27% on the previous year. Sales of tents and other equipment continue to climb. Both the high and low end of the market have expanded rapidly. "Glamping" – where you sleep in a luxuriously appointed tent someone elso has put up for you – is seen as an acceptable, if not preferable alternative to staying in a B&B, but you can also get a tent in Tesco for a tenner. Camping is suddenly for everybody.
My parents did not camp. Apart from a few dispiriting outings with the scouts, I have no history of it. The first time I tried – an Argos tent on a headland in Cornwall during the 1999 eclipse – resulted in a holiday of so many isolated magical moments that within a few years I had completely forgotten that the weather was actually terrible, and that our youngest child was six weeks old at the time. A few more camping trips convinced me I needed a better tent. Some time later I gave up on sleeping bags – I now take the duvet off the bed and stuff it into a bin liner. Over the years I have more or less figured out how I like to camp. I'm just not sure why I like to camp.
Perhaps it's because camping is to living as cooking is to barbecuing. It's basically an outdoor version of housekeeping. There is something so primally satisfying about escaping from our reliance on infrastructure that it turns the most tedious chore into an adventure. Suddenly making toast is interesting, just because it's so hard.
We've had an amazing run of real summer weather this year – it's all too easy to forget what a night in a tent in Britain can be like – but when you're out in the elements even good weather can be bad weather. Hot and sunny, cold and rainy, whatever: it all comes under the general heading of exposure, and people die of it all the time. Camping is exciting because even at its most tame it's still a tiny bit dangerous, although when you've finally put up your tent and fetched your water and made your toast, mere survival can get – whisper it – a little boring.
Ennui sets in at Camp G2 within an hour or two. Gathered in the big tipi to avoid sunstroke, people start to wonder aloud where things go from here. "Once you get into it you realise you've got nothing else to do but hang around and chat," says someone. "Enforced inactivity," says another colleague, trying to make it sound like a positive thing. Someone else enters the tipi. "There's a squirrel in the yurt," she says, sitting down. In the silence that follows, people begin to consult notepads and their phones. The camping trip is in real danger of turning into an editorial conference when someone suggests a nature walk. When someone suggests a nature walk that ends at a pub, participation swells to 100%.
Nature and beer have a powerful effect on the human spirit. At dusk building a fire, which definitely counts as Something To Do, becomes infinitely more challenging, and therefore more rewarding, when Sam Wollaston and I decide not to use any newspaper, relying instead on little curly bits of bark peeled from trees on the walk. It takes a little longer – about an hour longer – to get it going, but when it finally works I feel like Ray Mears.
Cooking on a campfire is a task I leave to others. There's nothing about cooking in a squatting position in the dark that improves it for me. After a hasty supper an even more daunting challenge – the traditional singing round the campfire – presents itself.
Music and camping do not necessarily mix. Not that many people enjoy both. The farmer who owns Wowo encourages music, and tells me proudly that musicians camp for free, but I'm not sure how he distinguishes between musicians and people who simply own instruments. I have my banjo with me, but I'd rather pay than audition.
Even Wowo has limits designed to protect the ears of those camping nearby. Their list of rules prohibits bongos, for example. I am sorry to see it doesn't expressly forbid banjos, but I'm fairly sure it will next year.
There is a probably a point at which alcohol intake, fellow-feeling and fresh air combine to create an atmosphere ideal for communal singing. I don't know the exact formula, but here's a handy rule of thumb: by the time everyone is unselfconscious enough to belt out the one song they all know all the words to, and that someone can play on the banjo (in our case, I'm afraid, it was I Will Survive), you really should have all been in bed half an hour ago.
The next morning I am suffering from several competing forms of remorse. I am also dehydrated, and my air mattress is flat. My tent, which was cold and clammy when I got into it, is now hot and humid. At some point in the night it must have been the ideal temperature, but I slept through that.
Outside, guy ropes are already being wound up. Most of the tents are down before breakfast. I pack, as usual, with the unseemly haste of a man trying to outrun a tornado. When I'm done, I walk up to a colleague and tell him that, all things considered, the whole thing came off very well.
"Yeah, it was great," he says. "Are you ready to go? I'm ready to go. Let's get out of here."
G2 stayed at Wowo campsite in Sussex (www.wowo.co.uk). Call 01825 723 414 or email camping@wowo.co.uk
Tipi supplied by Red Tipi (www.redtipi.co.uk). Call 01273 858406 or email info@redtipi.co.uk
