General

When I tell people we go camping for our holidays they always ask about the weather, and they can be very sympathetic when I tell them we had some rain.

Now as the Daily Mail has reported (for the record – I do not read the Daily Mail, Diana has been buying it because she is collecting the “Best of British” DVDs and the Children’s Encyclopaedia given away with it – but she cannot resist reading bits out to me, whilst she is reading it and I am doing something else. Just a moment ago told me about a woman who had sextuplets, I don’t care! And now she is showing me a photo of Fern Britain in a black bikini! Diana cannot bear the thought of simply buying the paper, getting the DVD, and then throwing the paper away).

Anyway back to my post, the Daily Mail has speculated that this will be the wettest August on record and whilst we have been away, we have seen some heavy rain. We put the tent up in the rain at Ayr, we took it down in the rain at Ayr, we put it back up and took it down later at the Dingwall campsite, yes, in the rain and we have put the tent up here in Beadnell Bay in the rain.

But we love camping. A couple of years back Diana found this great tent, made by Outwell and bought from Blacks, a Colorado 5. Two bedrooms, large groundsheeted living area, with large windows, storage pockets an entry door and a large canopy door on the side (for good weather). It is sometimes a challenge to put it up – it was raining and very windy when we got to Beadnell Bay and Jeremy had to hold the tent down to stop it becoming a big kite. But Diana, Jeremy and I can put it up in about 15 minutes which means we do not get very wet, The bedrooms and ground sheets are fitted once the main tents is up – keeping the rain off you. We carefully pack the car so we know where everything is and we can get the stuff into the tent reasonably quickly. Once we are settled in the living room is dry and warm – yes it really feels warmer in the tent compared to the outside, it is really well designed tent. So to be honest, although we would prefer it to be sunny and to only rain between the hours of 1 and 3 am and be dry by the time we get up, we do not care about the weather.

At this moment, whilst I am writing this on my PDA, I can hear the waves on the beach at Beanell Bay, as I could this morning at 6.30am when I was sitting outside the tent, in the brilliant sun shine, drinking my first tea of the day.

We stay mainly in Camping and Caravan Club sites as then we know the standard of site we will be using. They have very high standards of site and facilities, lots of hot water for the showers and washing up, clean working toilets, plenty of well maintained water taps and clean well looked after waste bins and even a washing machine and dryers if needed. And at every site we had ever been to with the exception now of Culzean Castle Site, helpful, friendly, polite wardens.

At the Culzean site we were treated to some spectacular sunsets. The Dingwall site, our personal favourite, was as good as ever.

We do not take a television or even a radio for use in the tent, although we all have various devices, PDAs, Diana has her laptop, Jeremy has his Gameboy DS, what we do most evenings is play cards or a family favourite Rummikub. WE spend time together without one of us having to go off somewhere in a hurry. I even severely restrict the number of business calls and emails I answered – leaving it to my Office Manager. We have quality family time.

So we like camping – we do not need sympathy if it rains.

PS I have posted this on my return home – and we did take the tent down in the rain at Beadnell Bay as well!