The novice
Lucy Mangan
It's insanity, is what it is. For thousands of years mankind has sought to improve his condition; to protect himself from the elements, to develop a way of life that amounts to more than a constant search for food, warmth and a decent place to shit. And now that we have, at least here in the affluent western world, finally managed to attain such exalted heights, what do we do? We go camping. We take the active decision to abandon comfortable, fully plumbed, brick dwellings and go and live in a field in a nowhere-near-waterproof-enough shell and fend for ourselves once more.
I say we. I mean you, for as you might have deduced already, I have never been camping. Never even briefly entertained it as a viable option.
Now, here I am out in the middle of field somewhere in Haywards Heath, and I can see no reason to change my mind. There are Portaloos and a compost toilet along one edge. A tree with a swing stands on another, apparently intended to replace Sky+ and the internet as a source of entertainment, and in between there is grass. Grass and a pile of fibreglass rods, an inflatable mattress and billowing sheets of nylon that will, I'm told, if assembled in the right way, procure me shelter for the night.
Do you know what would also do that? The home I left an hour ago.
After watching me struggle helplessly for about six months – time passes differently in a fieldful of recalcitrant manmade fibre – my colleagues Sam and Tim take over. A tent takes shape. I think they may be geniuses.
As the afternoon wears on I become more baffled. Every activity undertaken is simply a lengthier, more complicated, less efficient or more wearisome version of what it would be at home. Even lunch is difficult. There is simply no way to sit comfortably on the ground for long enough to eat a meal. I have empirically proven this during innumerable picnics. The chair is the greatest invention ever, after Solid Walls and The Tiled Roof.
There is no shade and my editor has to lend me her sunscreen so I don't sue the Guardian for giving me skin cancer in 10 years' time. "You should be wearing this every day!" she says, as she helps me slop on the factor 15. "Not if you don't go outside more than twice a week," I point out, but I suspect she thinks I am exaggerating.
We walk half an hour across more fields and through a wood to the pub. There are two pubs within five minutes of my house, both located on easily traversed paved roads, I can't help but remember. OK, you may see fewer purple hairstreak butterflies on your way, but it seems to me like a trade-off very much worth making.
At the pub we sit on chairs (I wonder how many chairs I have in my house, ready for use at a moment's notice – hitherto unsung heroes all?), but still in the sun. I am made to wear a hat. So far, camping appears to be a zero-sum game consisting of deliberately exposing yourself to the elements and then attempting to mitigate their effects. I don't wish to harp on, but why not just stay at home where the bulk of this work has already been done for you, thereby freeing you to spend your evenings watching CSI: Special Victims Unit?
On the way back, I have to pee in the woods. At least this is simple.
Back at the campsite we build a fire in order to cook dinner. Fire is fun. Fire is always fun, and so are sausage sandwiches. Not if you don't fancy a sausage sandwich, of course – then you might pine quite deeply for the refrigerator full of other choices you left behind what seems like many days ago now – but if you do, it's great. Some fold-up chairs have appeared, which means none of my body parts is now pained or numb. Such a treat! Thank you, from the bottom of my bottom, whoever brought them.
As the sun goes in, two things happen. It gets cold and it gets dark. Who knew? I didn't bring a torch so now won't be able to read. This does not endear me any further to camping. We move into a communal tipi. I keep drinking but cannot get drunk, which at least means the consequent trips to the compost toilet and the pelvic shenanigans required to obey the request to direct my wee into the filter are merely exhausting rather than humiliating.
At 10.30, just as I am contemplating continued enforced sobriety, a bookless bedtime in a freezing field, followed by a doubtless disturbed night's sleep before a sausagey breakfast and morning spent packing up the sodding stuff we spent hours putting up today, the photographer announces he has finished and is going home.
I am, generally speaking, a finisher. Books, aerobics classes, solicitor training contracts – I may be weeping long before the end comes, but I can usually be relied upon to get there. But the photographer lives half a mile from my house and before I'm quite aware of what I'm doing, I have leapt out of the tipi and on to his back and am begging him to take me home. My editors try to persuade me otherwise, but even my instinctive cower before authority has left me. "Mankind . . . thousands of years . . ." I whisper brokenly as I gesture wildly towards the ink-black fields in a way that is meant to encompass the wind, the temperature, the already-damp grass, the sky but no Sky, the absence of Kettle Chips, duvets and windows. "Not right . . . Must . . . go home . . . never come again." They let me leave.
As the car gulps down the miles of smooth, tarmacadamed road back to civilisation I begin, dimly perhaps, to see the upside of camping. Like sex or shiatsu massage, it really is lovely when it stops.
The veteran
Sam Wollaston
I thought I knew what camping was. When I was a kid, we used to go camping for our holidays. Camping meant piling the car full of stuff – tents, sleeping bags, walking boots, a gas stove, packet soups etc – and driving to the Lake District. The car was parked, the stuff was stuffed into rucksacks, and we'd set off into the hills. My dad would have selected a spot on the map near water but not boggy and not too close to any well-used paths, so we wouldn't be bothered by other people; I remember a little lake called Stony Tarn well.
And that was camping. We pitched our tents and, for the next few days, we would live up there – walking and scrambling on rocks when the weather was nice. Once we rescued a stupid sheep that was stranded on a ledge, lowering it down on a rope to safety. That abseiling sheep, it showed no gratitude at all.
And when the weather wasn't good, which in my memory was often, we holed up in the tent playing rummy. I remember my brother and sister looking ghostly in the tent's green light, the sound of incessant rain on canvas, and that you had to avoid touching the sides or the water would come through. It came through anyway. There were sleeping bags, wet boots and socks, blisters, midges, plastic cups and powdered milk. Why couldn't we go to a Spanish Costa or Disney World like normal people?
Now, many years later, I discover a totally different kind of camping. Bordering on glamping, I think. I'm in a Sussex field, in a tipi (you can't say wigwam any more, it's racist). There are ribbons on the end of the poles – very pretty, but also useful as they tell you which way the wind is blowing: information you need to adjust the angle of the vent, about which more later.
I didn't even put the tipi up; it was all ready when I arrived. I parked my car right next to it, didn't have to walk anywhere. (To be honest, I don't think my cool box would have fitted into a rucksack.) In the corner of the field is an eco-friendly composting loo. Yeah, OK, that's pretty gross; there are still improvements to be made in some areas of camping. But there were no loos at all in the Lake District, just a short walk followed by the deed and the construction of a little cairn of shame.
Inside, the tipi is huge, cool and airy in the day, comfortable, tasteful. There are scatter cushions, sheepskin rugs (ha, that'll teach them, stupid animals). And I have a futon to sleep on. A bed, in a tent! How excellent is that?
Next door to my tipi is a yurt – like a yoghurt with the middle taken out. It's even bigger and has furniture, you probably have to pay council tax. There is a row of hot water bottles hanging on pegs. For a moment, I confess, I am jealous; then I remember Stony Tarn, and suddenly my tipi is back to being more than adequate.
The tipi saves its best trick for the evening. In the middle of the floor is what looks like a huge metal fruit bowl, and logs . . . an open fire! To keep the chill at bay. And a well-adjusted vent means the smoke draws up and out and away from eyes. Tealights are lit too, for the ladies, and scattered among the scatter cushions.
We have wine, both colours, and music. It's warm and cosy – maybe camping isn't so bad after all. It's almost like being at home, in fact . . . So what exactly is the point? Who knows? I'm not even sure if this is camping.
