AIBU to think camping is f*cking shit, it’s not cheap and it’s not fun

[Pumkinfailure]

I’m currently a week into a 3 week camping tour of Europe and I’m ready to jack it in. I surely can’t be the only one to find this whole malarkey fucking hideous. Sleeping on a sloping bed in a tent hotter than the devils furnace, kids screaming day and night, neighbours who hate our wellbehaved Placid lab and have instructed us to keep him near to us at all times, never feeling clean, marriage hanging by a thread, no personal space or time alone. Not even wine is helping. And 50 bloody euros a night for the privilege!!
Please tell me I’m not alone on my detest for this form of holiday and share your tips to help me survive the rest of the holiday!

This thread is bloody hilarious!

I posted this on the other camping thread, but it probably should be here on this one:

Non camper here. Things i've learned here which are probably obvious but i've never properly thought of are:

People go on holiday in tents you can't stand up in
Some sites you can't take your car to the pitch
Some sites you can't have a fire
You get condensation inside a tent
They can be boiling hot by 5am
You have to decide if you want to be in the shade in the morning or afternoon and boil the rest of the time.
There may not be any shade at all.
Noise is a massive problem.
Unless you have an awning your only option is the tent or the car.
There isn't always electricity available.
Even people who love camping seem to agree that the best bit of a day camping is the last little bit of it.

I had one horrible week camping in Marlow as a kid with the school - massive tent full of stinky kids - and swore i'd never camp again. Nothing on this thread has changed my mind!

Holidayed in caravan's every year for the first 30 years of my life. The big static ones. My parents used to own a big caravan on the Durdle Door site in Dorset. When i was a kid most of the tents on the site were always quite small and basic. The camping bit was separate to the caravan bit and it was under tall fir trees and on a slope. On really bad wet night some of little tents would end up with a river running through them sad After really awful nights like this my parents would go down to the camping area with hot drinks and ask the worst affected campers if any of them would like to come for a bit of a dry out and a warm cupper in our caravan. Some of them would have sat in their car all night while their tent gradually washed down the slope in the dark. Ugh. Poor buggers.

Something else. Up in the extreme north of Scotland it never gets dark. The local football team play at midnight next to the campsite. It doesn’t matter too much because the noise from the swedes in the tent next door drowns out the football.

At loch ness the sound of guitars being strummed badly.

Ullapool. We stayed up all night long holding the tent down.. in the morning half the site had gone.

We only go to sites that enforce quiet after 10 or 11.

I love going to the toilet about 3/4am...wait...because it is just starting to get light and it is so quiet. I'm hardly ever up at that time and certainly not outside. Its beautiful and peaceful. Looking over dewey hills and mountains at that time.

Some people here are dismissing camping because of one experience, and by the sounds it an experience where there wee underprepared.

It's like saying I hate staying in hotel be abuse I did it once and the mattresses were lumpy, or it was next to a motorway, or someone in the next room was snoring etc. There are many ways to camp. Vapid the big commercial campsites for a start.

We had a hideously hot weekend in a hot recently with the kids. Doesn't put me off hotels for life. We've had some issues camping--one in our old tent the tape came off and the tent leaked, we had the wrong gas canister.

But as someone said up thread, the freedom for kids is awesome.

Oh God I feel your pain! Many years ago when I was first married my DH he helped run a scout group. Somehow he convinced me to go away on a scout camp. Basic would make it sound luxurious! It rained the whole time, my period started which meant I had to burn my sanitary towels on the fire when the boys were off doing whatever the hell it is that boys do at scout camp and the toilets were disgusting. I went to bed wet and woke up wet. Then I cried ...... DH had enough of me and drove me all the way back home (about 2 hours drive) and dumped me back ceremoniously on our doorstep. I knew then that I had married the right man! We are still married after 34 years but he knows we are finished if he ever mentions the "c" word again!!

Oh dear, comments like "camping is only a holiday if your house is shitter than a tent" are making me think more about my love for my tent living in the back garden.

Sadly I have decided it is true Small house, more DC than bedrooms, every single storage place possible in use, fucking freezing lounge, cats underfoot, no porch for shoes and coats ...my spacious empty tent is bliss compared to it

I do have some none negotiables though (when proper camping as well as garden )

Tent porch and awning
Separate bedroom pods
Enough headroom to stand up straight
Electric hook up
Hanging storage and maiden for towels
Proper cooking facilities
Huge stash of baby wipes/clothes pegs/towels/kitchen paper
Dustpan and brush
Electric blanket
Duvets and pillows
Fairy lights (especially on guy ropes)

Even typing this is making me cosy inside.

I'm actually now contemplating putting the tent up in the garden again in December as a Christmas grotto with a heater and blankets and rugs and fairy lights and hot chocolate and...

I'm going to call it CHRISTMAS CAMPING!

I fear this is not the thread for it though I can't decide whether to start it in the Christmas or Camping topic. Definitely not AIBU

Definitely in Christmas Exile - we’d just LOVE that kind of mad and fun notion! 🎅

Camping in Ullapool is why I now insist on cottages in Scotland, although the campsite there is really lovely. Just not in a hurricane.

Couldn't do more than 2 nights let alone 3 weeks ! Hells teeth ! Keep supping ....

My DD goes winter camping with Guides and loves it. You need a good sleeping bag.

I’m not the most keen ever but it’s much improved now with decent gear compared to cheap gear in Icelandic tents that leaked and let in the wind as a girl guide. And now that I can drink wine on personal trips (no alcohol allowed on Cubs or Scouts camps though).

But despite the utter all-encompassing shitness of camping, do you find yourself thumbing through copies of TGO in January, planning wild camping expeditions in the Cairngorms for when summer arrives? Note to self: Re-read this thread when the xmas decos have been boxed up again and I'm in planning mode - and get the Thomson Summer Sun brochure instead!

Update- I finally got to sleep at 1am, got up for a wee a 4am, the dog escaped and I spent an hour looking for him (he was back in the tent), had a mad panic I had bladder cancer as looked like I peed blood (but on reflection think it was the pink toilet chemicals), woken at 6 am by blazing sunshine, spent 12 euros on a loaf of bread, a packet of butter and a pint of milk in the camping shop, fell out with DH again, queued for the loo this morning and followed a woman who had done the stinkiest shit ever and sat on a still warm seat, googled flights home.
I have booked a hotel tonight, alone (and it’s cheaper than the bloody campsite!!).

Good move pumpkin
You will laugh about this later but for now just stay in a hotel

Tell me you didn’t arrive at your campsite at midnight and get told off by a 6 year old!

Enjoy your hotel tonight @Pumkinfailure!

Is the dog staying with your husband on the campsite?

Dear god, Pumkin in other circumstances this would sound like human rights abuses. Go to a hotel and never look back.

Good call, Pumpkinfailure - tomorrow morning you will sit on a cool loo-seat, and only have to smell your own bodily functions!

Your family will see reason in their own time.

A claggy bog set and toxic stench would just about have finished me off, OP

seat

Oooooo still warm toilet seat barf

Having now had a chance to read (most of) the thread, a couple of points occur to me.

Camping with Guides, and latterly Cubs and Scouts, is far more about "mucking in" and "making do" (although Cubs and Scouts both use a marquee as HQ for Leaders, gas rings to cook on, and there are no more icelandics involved!!). Cubs go to the same activity centre annually - there are proper loos, we get fed on arrival night (so we can concentrate on set up not cooking for and feeding small people), and there are trained instructors taking the Cubs on activities all day on Saturday!! Scouts bring 2 toilet tents with the bucket toilets (between roughly 50 Scouts and their leaders!!), and camp in a farmer's field with no running water and cooking on open fires (leaders use gas rings but each patrol does their own) - and stay for 10 days so far more capacity for both mud and general exhaustion!

DD and I have done personal camping trips twice - once we got permission to stay on a Scout site (quiet period, and we are a Leader and Member of the organization) while the other we stayed in a commercial site.

The commercial one was nice, as it goes - plenty of space (clearly marked pitches were large and there weren't that many on site so there was a whole pitch between us and the next group), not totally regimented, decent wash blocks and washing up areas etc. But lots of people and quiet time was not really adhered to (and no open fires allowed).

The Scout one was great fun though. We could have open fires, and there were fire barrels to use (so no need to build an alter fire). There were plenty of water stands. The toilets were reasonable (and I have the code for the leaders' one - DD still had to use the regular ones) as there weren't many on site that time. There is a barn for inclement weather - tight when site is full but grand for us. A visiting Venture Unit "adopted" DD (still just a Cub then) and taught her how to make dreamcatchers (while I got to drink tea with their leaders!).

On both, we did a decent hike and cooked ourselves some nice grub. But I'd go back to the Scout one before the commercial one again.

Enjoy your nice hotel, OP. Hopefully it soothes you greatly (and hey, if after one night you think "I'll book another couple," why not?)

I've done a lot of camping. There are only (IMO) two reasons for doing it.

1. You're doing the sort of out-doorsy activity that means it's the only way of staying in that location.
2. You're skint.

If neither of these apply, get an air BNB.

( Oohyoudevilnow - I love the idea of "it seems appealing when planning in mid winter" - but the bit you neglect to say is that if the destination is the Scottish Highlands, mid winter with a really really good sleeping bag and geodesic tent that will cope with the wind is the only time of year you should contemplate camping in the Cairngorms or indeed anywhere in the Highlands, because other times of year you will get eaten alive. Imagine everything that is worst about this thread, plus midges. We are talking inner circles of hell here...)

Sorry, the other really great thing about the Scout one was that we had LOADS of space to ourselves - the other Unit were well down the field (and not that loud really - they entertained the only other Venture Unit on site indoors in the hostel at nights rather than campfires).

Weather was good, but we did have rain. Lots more rain in commercial one (and a visiting DSis) so we were more tied there.

But I also forgot to mention something I found VITAL after my 2nd camping trip back with Cubs (I had a 20 year hiatus on canvas sleeping!). When packing the car to leave the house, put a FULL (from the skin out!) change of clothes, including shoes, and a dry towel, in a plastic bag in the footwell of the car. This DOES NOT MOVE until you have struck camp, and all the gear is in the car.

It means that, if you've had bad weather, especially on striking camp (as has now happened me 3 times in striking the last 5 camps!), you have a chance to get dried off and into warm, clean clothes for the journey home. With the bag being useful for the wet things. I can strike camp far more cheerfully even in the face of pouring rain and wind if I know I don't have to sit in wet clothes for a couple of hours driving home (and then unpacking a van and stowing Scout Group gear before I can go home to a shower).