A man on a tiny tractor is talking to me and my husband in Swedish. We are staring at our Type 2 VW camper, marooned in the Malmö mud, and praying that the rusty underside of the vehicle does not give way during attempts to pull her clear of her overnight resting place. Not for the first time on this rain-soaked Scandinavian summer tour, we wonder whether a trip to a nice hot beach might have been a more sensible option.
Our bus is named after Ethelred the Unready for reasons that will be only too familiar to VW owners without pockets filled with gold. (And yes, we are aware she's had a sex change, but I've yet to meet a camper that's referred to as a "he".) If you have a pot of money you'd like to exchange for a vehicle that needs a little rest and its boot opening if the temperature rises much above 25C or if you go on a motorway for too long, you can't do better than a vintage camper.
It's not a holiday if you don't sit on a camp chair by the side of the road, freshly brewed cup of tea in hand, while your transport takes a breather.
There's no joy like clambering into the driver's seat, where a spring pops up and rips the back pocket of your jeans – but that's a small price to pay for a trip in the old girl. She grumbles into action, making a fearsome noise, before floating down the road. You don't drive her so much as ride her, moving a steering wheel that's as big as a bin lid in the vague direction of travel.
Campers don't go anywhere fast. (Although we did once get flashed for speeding in the Netherlands. We didn't know whether to curse our bad luck or celebrate it as a victory.) But the journey is part of the treat: you trundle along, peering out of the window with no bonnet in front of you, a draught around your knees, people waving and other VWs beeping as they pass. Just so long as you don't need to be anywhere at a certain time – from experience, I wouldn't recommend ferry dashes, for instance – you're practically forced to unwind by the time you've reached the end of your street.
Then there's the arrival. Up pops the roof, on goes the kettle, out comes the dinner stuff. No need to unpack. Definitely no need to pitch a tent. And next morning you're ready to roll off whenever the whim takes you.
Well, not quite whenever. Which is why we're standing on a Swedish campsite in the sheeting rain hoping that a miniature tractor driven by a grown man doesn't break Ethelred's undercarriage. Around us, massive motorhomes seem unbothered by the quagmire, despite their on-board loos, showers and possibly, based on their sheer size, ballrooms. But why would you want that when you have a rock'n'roll bed, a couple of hammocks in the roof and a fold-down table? Why indeed?
