Old Annie Cawood has just come back from a weekend away with her brother and extended family. Every year the whole lot of them pack up their bags and head off for an annual family reunion somewhere in the British countryside. Over the years they've been all over the place. One year they went as far a field as Buxton in Derbyshire and last year they took over a guest house in Cromer, Norfolk. Miles away that is and very difficult to get to from North Devon. They always like to stay somewhere interesting I hear the guest house was haunted and in Buxton they stayed in a converted cave up on the peaks. This year they decided to stay closer to home, price of fuel and all that and went down to a farm just outside Holsworthy where they hunkered down in some bespoke pods situated in an old quarry. They had a marvelous time inspite of the weather and she assures me that it was all very warm and cosy in the pods. Apparently, so Annie was told by her fellow campers, a couple from Coventry, this particular farm campsite had previously had a reputation as something of a naturist resort. The couple were obviously disappointed, as they were travelling suspiciously lightly for a weekend away, to find that the farm was under new management and was now orientating itself towards the family market. Fortunately, Annie was able to placate their balked expectations by pointing them in the direction of Bude and the secluded car parks alongside Tamar Lakes where they may have been able to find others seeking robust outdoor activities of a nudish variety. All good clean fun.
Due to the often cited pitiful state of British the farmer has had to diversify and has turned to glamping. Now, I've heard of this activity before, basically it's camping with a duvet thrown in instead of taking along your own damp smelly sleeping bags and I think they are hooked up to the mains. All for 60 pound a night which to my calculating is about ten times what you pay if you bring your own tent up to West Down and forgo a string of fancy fairy lights. I remember Wes Twardo getting very excited a couple of years back when he came across a couple of old military tents at Pilton Auction Rooms which he snapped up. He popped round to the Reform afterwards and told us about his idea for glamping on his bit of land out at Monkleigh. He was very excited at the prospect of cornering the market for this fad in the North Devon area. After a couple of pints we all went out to the car park where Wes spread out the tents. To me they looked like something Lord Baden Powell might have spent the night in under the stars at some Scout Jamboree in 1911. Wes didn't seem to fussed by this adding that he could spin it as Vintage Glamping. Still they did look quite hardy and Wes was convinced they were just the job.
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| Wes hoped to spin it as "vintage glamping." |
From all accounts the venture was not a startling success Wes has declined to comment on the matter and has obviously filed it away under the heading, "bad job not worth the bother." Word has it he only got one booking from his advert in London Loot and the talk in the Bell Inn was that these London folk weren't too happy with the toilet block which consisted a couple old commodes, picked up from Colin's in Barum Arcade, set upon a hole in the ground covered in an old bead curtain and a bucket of ajax powder .Although I reckon the final straw came the evening they were all sat round the fireside playing ukuleles and the farmer who Wes rents his field to goes and let loose a load of bullocks in the field as he was getting fed up with the racket these then duly made a bee line for the encampment. Chaos ensued. So having had enough of these rudimentary facilities and bovine intervention they upped sticks and headed for the relative comforts of the Roundswell Travelodge.
To me this all sounds like another one of these self indulgent lifestyle fads which come and go year in year out and are picked up and bleated about by witless city folk as some kind of life affirming endeavour. They achieve a prominence for a few months in the Sunday supplements before quickly disappearing and a few fortunate people, wily Devonians amoung them, are able to cash in the whims of these pitiful and most fatuous of types. I have observed that this year glamping has come back again and so appears to be quite an enduring activity.
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| I fail to see the fun in this sort of thing |
I can't quite fathom it myself surely the whole point of camping is not having the home comforts you are supposed to sleep on the ground, cook on a calor gas stove or preferably open fire. Put up your tent, gather your wood, set up your camp kitchen, pt the sausages on the griddle and crack open the cider and spend an enjoyable evening gawping at your fellow campers or lying on your back looking up at he stars. Smashing. From time to time I like to take me tent out to Brownsham and camp up on the cliffs. As youngsters Welcome Mouth was a favorite destination where we would have to do a bit of fishing for our supper. I suppose this would be called Wild Camping these days. This year I have a mind to go to North Morte. To my mind that's the great benefit of living in a holiday area you don't have to go too far to have a break away. Of course that's always been the case, even as kids on our annual family holiday we went from Barnstaple to Croyde a journey of at least ten miles where we would spend a couple of weeks in a large tent, much modified over the years by Mother so it looked like it had been made by a bunch of Bedouins who had found themselves round the back of the Chelsea Quilt factory or Braunds Sailmakers. This was back in the sixties when you were allowed to stick your tent right behind the dunes. Granny and Granfer would pop down with supplies and we'd spend the whole time bellyboarding, hardly ever out of the water we were. The Beach Club's pinball machines provided the only distraction and this was partly financed by an evening collection of Corona bottles from off of the beach and returned to the chip shop for the deposit and a bag of scribbles. Now that's what I call life affirming. Happy Days.
