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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To wonder why people have picnics in car parks?

92 replies

Tournesol · 25/05/2015 18:13

I dunno if it is just a National Trust thing but it seems people seem to be obsessed with sitting round their car having a picnic when if they walked just 50 metres they could sit in a proper lovely picnic spot with picnic benches and everything!

Can anyone enlighten me? Am I missing out on something here?

OP posts:

meglet · 26/05/2015 18:21

sparkling you would not want to see inside my car. I started a spring clean the other week and stopped counting at 10 empty crisp packets .

Sparklingbrook · 26/05/2015 18:26

meglet the stuff of nightmares!

TiggyD · 26/05/2015 19:05

Some people get out their cars?!

Don't they know that's where the outdoors is? What if they disturb a badger's nest?

LifeHuh · 26/05/2015 22:06

Well, YANBU to wonder, but in my family growing up it was a tradition - that's what we did, we went to NT properties and picnicked in the car park
So YWBU to move on from wondering why to any criticism of people who do!
NT car parks are usually quite pleasant to picnic in and you don't have to carry all your stuff too far; then you can pack back up and go and enjoy the place itself ( though actually we had been known to go and picnic in the car park and then leave ... )

LifeHuh · 26/05/2015 22:11

And to clarify we never ate in the car - just in the car park! (Sissinghurst springs to mind -car park just a field really and not that busy when I was young!)

LittleMilkNoSugar · 26/05/2015 22:48

Eating IN the car I get. But setting up picnic chairs and tables beside your car in a car park..?

mrsfuzzy · 26/05/2015 22:51

lol at this thread, it's brilliant and sooo british !

Heyho111 · 26/05/2015 22:55

They may be having lunch first then going off exploring not wanting to carry anything they didn't have to.
Saying that did see a family spend all day in the car park not being able to see the beach etc last year. Kids played on the verge all day.

ElleyBear13 · 26/05/2015 23:04

My family did this, and I've carried on the tradition! It's easier than carting all the picnic food/blankies etc, you either eat before you walk or walk then eat. Plus its sometimes warmer/sheltered in the car!

Coincidenceschmoincidence · 26/05/2015 23:06

Phalarope at your beach observations. Went to perranporth in cornwall last year. I have never seen the like. The beach is vast, yet people were rammed in like sardines next to the car park, marking out their tiny territories with yards of asda wind breaks.

2 mins walk saw clear open spaces. It was baffling

Treaclepot · 26/05/2015 23:14

It's so common one of my university lecturers did some research into the phenomena. His main interest was basically how people interact with the environment. The group of people who drive into carparks eat and then leave were one 'type'. Though he found subsections, those who couldn't get out their cars and thoughs (the majority) that chose not to. He basically concluded that for some people driving somewhere pretty, and eating was viewed as a day out.

Must add that this was about 20 years ago, before dogging became well known, not sure he would have been able to conduct his survey's as easily now!

CurlyhairedAssassin · 26/05/2015 23:18

We do both types of picnic- car picnic at one end of the spectrum (actually in the car) and at the other end, sitting on a mossy rock speckled with sheep poo up a mountain in the drizzle after walking for 3 hours. With both types it's been for practical reasons. Car picnics have been used because we needed to get inside and get warm before our fingers dropped off, before going off exploring again; because the wind was wild and I was fed up with my cheese and hair sandwich; because we had finished looking around the (holiday) town for the morning and were going back to the car anyway to go to a beach 40 mins away and it was lunchtime and we were too hungry to wait until the beach.

When you sit eating under a tree in a forest sheltering from the rain, sitting on a bouncy fallen thin tree trunk, cold and sipping from your flask of hot chocolate like it's nectar, then it's usually because there is no other option, and you have to eat!

So both in-the-car and in-the-wild picnicking I can understand. I will never understand people putting up picnic tables near their car in a car park. Although I suspect that they are people who don't want crumbs in their car AND want a proper, clean, picnic table AND don't want to/can't carry all that very far from the car.

CurlyhairedAssassin · 26/05/2015 23:26

I remember strange trips to places as a kid where we never got out the car. It was when my grandma was with us, and she had suggested "a nice, drive out."

Somewhere not too far away, fairly scenic (river, hilltop etc), we'd stop there for 20 mins or so people-watching and admiring the view, then drive home again (dropping Grandma off at her nursing home on the way.)

I was as baffled then as I am now. I think my dad thought he was giving his mum a change of scene. And of course, her mobility wasn't great, so she couldn't have walked far.

I suppose it stems from the invention of the car and it being used by relatively ordinary folk. Suddenly they could explore wherever they wanted whenever they wanted. That was probably the allure of the "nice drive out."

MrsMook · 26/05/2015 23:27

The picnicking next to the boot of the car has always perplexed me too. Eating in the car is more logical for shelter, although I didn't appreciate the time that my wimpy in-laws decreed that it was too inclement to have a proper picnic, and that we would go to the cars which meant that my lunch was marred by being uncomfortably wedged between two car seats to feed the baby.

FrankTurnersGuitar · 26/05/2015 23:32

We often have a picnic in the campervan, dog allergies make it difficult to eat elsewhere.

Summerisle1 · 26/05/2015 23:46

My former PIL always stopped beside busy roads in order to get out a picnic hamper, little table (with checked cloth) and chairs and tuck into home-made pork pies, dainty sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs and MIL's special 'travelling fruit cake'. All washed down with tea made with water boiled up on the Primus and poured into the travelling teapot. Their picnic catering was exemplary but their alfresco feasts were also heavily seasoned with exhaust fumes.

They insisted on picnicking by the car because they also insisted that their car 'needed a rest' halfway through any journey longer than 50 miles and they weren't about to risk tiring the car out by getting off the main road and looking for anywhere more scenic. Let alone leave the poor, exhausted vehicle alone once they'd crossed the Hertfordshire border into unknown and 'furrin' parts.

sunflower49 · 26/05/2015 23:49

I have fond memories of doing this as a child with my Grandparents and I've only questioned it upon reading this thread!

I suppose It is cosier and means you can picnic without having to carry your boxes of food with you, and the empty boxes back. I loved it. But I also love picnicking outside :)

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