Tell me your horror camping stories

[deepsea]

I am in a foul mood. It had rained all weekend. Children are so bored. I have used up all of my fun summer ideas/crafts/Betty Crocker cake mixtures/energy/money and just need to lie in bed for a day (at least) undisturbed.
They want to go camping and have everything out of the cupboard now, tents, sleeping bags etc and are busy packing toys in bags cheerfully. It is cold, it is raining and I have just finished reading the camping in Cornwall thread.

Please tell me how I can put them off! Even dh is not ‘adverse’ to the camping idea he thinks the weather is going to clear up!

I can’t face it on any level

Head to toe*

A few years ago we had one of those tents without an enclosed inside lining (hopefully that makes sense).

One night a rat came in.

There's a brilliant book called 'The Tent, the bucket and me' by Emma Kennedy. Sounds like some of you could write the sequel!

I remember when I was 17 and DMs new thing at the time insisted we all went camping to "bond". DM bought a £800 tent to house us all ( 9 of us and 3 dogs), we travelled 5 hours to Scarborough to camp on top of a cliff. We went to get dinner on night 2 of 7 and came back just in time to see the tent take flight off of the cliff. We went home early...

Tent next to us got hit by lightening in France a couple of weeks ago. It was VERY loud

Not camping per se but caravanning.

Twice a year with the in-hell-laws. Mil insists on it and we can't refuse because it's always been the done thing and the kids are excited to go. However. Every fucking time we all end up with severe D&V. All of us in a two bathroom caravan and it doesn't take long to realise that none of the in laws wash their hands. Ever. SIL will use the bathroom (quite clear from the smell) and the sink is dry. The soap unused.
But SIL and MIL insist on cooking. I've managed to jump in first a few times and get a dinner on but they'll meal plan something DH and I can't get out of. I've mentioned the hand washing as politely as I can (and eventually not politely at all!) but SIL laughs it off and tells us outright that she doesn't need to cos it's not like she's "got any on her hands!" They don't follow any basic food hygiene rules and quite frankly, the fact that they murder the food by over cooking it (Brussels sprouts are a soggy gloop and the thin beef steaks are like tough beef jerky), is actually a good thing in this instance.
This year DH and I paid for our own caravan before they had a chance to book and for the first time in a decade we didn't get sick. Any meals we ate with them were the ones I cooked and took to their caravan.

We booked a lovely campsite we'd seen when visiting the area a couple of years before. It was lovely and flat, with good shower facilities in a block near the entrance.
When we arrived we were shown to the overflow field. It was literally a field. And it was on a slight slope, wherever you pitched.

For the first 48 hours it rained steadily but not too hard. Even so, dragging DC for a 15 minute walk to the toilets/ showers was a pain. But everyone else was still enjoying it, so I persevered.

On the second night there was a really horrendous storm. Because of the slope, our tent got flooded at the front, and then in high winds one of the poles buckled, beyond repair. We ended up huddled in the one tiny section of the tent that was still dry all night.

Next morning, even DH had to admit that our tent was not longer fit to use. We started packing up, but decided to drive into the next town to get some food before we headed home.

As we pulled into the town, DH's eyes lit up. Within 20 minutes he had been to the outdoor equipment outlet and bought a new tent, and we were on our way back to the campsite. I wept.

Banks of the Chobe river, Botswana. Arrived late evening in the middle of a massive thunder storm, pouring rain, no electricity, toilets over flowing, armed gangs had been repeatedly raiding the camp site in response there was an armed patrol now scouting the camp, so potential for a gun fight, also wild hippos milling about and no food. That was a long but thankfully in the end uneventful night apart from the hippos! We left the next morning.

Milky - that is horrendous!!!

This was self-inflicted, but a few years ago I went camping with some friends. Dd1 and their daughter were the same age and I also had dd2 who was about 3 at the time. We stayed up too late drinking wine, bed around 2am, and my toddler woke at 5am. We had the shittest, cheapest tent on the market. The light was pouring through the tent lining, the sheep were baa-ing on the hills behind us and I could barely move. This was pre-smartphone days so I was stuck trying to entertain a small, freezing cold dd2 whilst simultaneously feeling like Death would take me at any moment. The showers were grim, cold and filthy. I refused to use them on the basis that I was pretty certain I would emerge dirtier than when I went in. I think I've subconsciously blocked out the memories of the toilets.

We left the moment I was sober enough to drive (breathalyser thing in my car).

Since then, the only place I have camped has been in an hotel.

DS3, 4, woke up and vomitted in his sleeping bag and then right through the tent as we tried to get outside. Then we had to find a way to clean up ourselves and the tent when the toilet block was a good walk away. Fucking nightmare.

Then we had to find a way to clean up ourselves and the tent when the toilet block was a good walk away

What you needed was a dog!

Have many fond childhood memories of camping holidays in the UK (I suspect my parents memories may not be as fond! ).

One that sticks out was being the last of the group to arrive (out of 5 or 6 families) and having to pitch our huge trailer tent in what turned out to be the beginnings of an almighty hurricane-type storm! I have a vivid memory of my dad and all the other dads holding the edges of the tent and literally being lifted off their feet while the mums were frantically trying to attach the tent to the ground!

We can laugh about it now but from what DM had told me, that year was the last camping holiday, we all went abroad after that!

I camped in the USA once and it was lovely (mainly). One night we had all put tents up and then gone to eat by the campfire. Went back to tents with torches and a fellow camper said “why is your tent pulsating?” - it was literally covered in spiders, attracted I suppose by my tent mates torch that she had left on inside. Luckily we had zipped it up but getting into the thing was a horror.

Another night, same trip, I woke up to see a HUGE spider silhouetted against the sky on the outside of the tent, but on the door bit.

Stayed at a lovely campsite on the south coast but after a few days two cars full of anti social dick heads rocked up and set up camp next to us. Cue loud music, huge bonfire and throwing empty cans about. Camp owner was too afraid to properly confront them and other polite requests to calm down was met with verbal abuse and threats of violence. They really were an unpleasant bunch. One morning after another night of partying they crawled out of their tents to find all their shoes that they had left out of their tents missing. After lots of threats and stomping around they packed up and got in their cars only to be stopped a mile down the road by the police who breathalysed the still drunk drivers. We found out later that one of the other campsite guests had donated all the shoes to the charity shop and tipped off the police that they were about to drive off.

My dad took us camping in 2002, to jersey. He used the tent from when he camped with Scouts in the 70’s that had been rolled up in my nana’s attic for years so obviously was full of mildew and holes he tried to repair himself. The tent obviously leaked all holiday, the air bed he and my brother slept on deflated every night so they got soggy and wet, all our clothes ended up mouldy. I complained 4 nights in a row I could hear something scratching around the tent in the night and eating things (he didn’t cover food properly) but he didn’t believe me , lo and behold he got up one morning and there was a Fox in the tent happily eating our leftover beans and sausages from the night before 😂😂😂 it was a disaster but we had a great time and I do look back on it fondly.

I have two!
Camping in Belgium and there was a thunderstorm so horrendous it completely felled our tent and soaked our belongings. There were three of us, 2 guys and me... and we ended up having to all sleep together inside the wendy house on the nearby childrens playground (we had no car had gotten there via train) to shelter from the rain. At least it was mid summer so not totally freezing.

Another was a festival I went to in the mountains... never camped in the mountains before.... It was mid summer and boiling so id only brought a thin blanket. We were carrying all our stuff in backpacks and had gotten there via boat so id packed pretty light... did not even have a jumper. Well it turns out that actually when that high up during the night it gets freezing... I think it was about 2 degrees or something ridiculous during the night... it was so so cold that in the end we had to spend all night just walking around and then try and get a few hours sleep in the very early morning when the temp was okay..... and then of course the heat would kick in and it would become unbearably hot inside the tent! We were there a week as well... im not sure how I stayed alive.... and then we camped another week somewhere else near a beach... I can tell you that two weeks in a two man tent with your boyfriend with one blanket and nothing to actually cushion the ground, gets pretty old pretty quickly... I just had to take power naps really early in the morning on the sand of the beach

We were tricked. We wanted to camp (sit down) but a friend made us hike every damn where. And then had nothing but darkness and cold dinner to look forward to. The nights we so cold, I can't stress how miserable we were, but then we finally understood why she always complained about the central heating whenever it was on.

Also, a sheep woke me up with a loud Baaaa from the other side of the tent wall. It was so close, nothing has frightened me as much as that to date.

I’ve camped loads over the years and never had a horror story - every trip has been great in its own way.

The last time I went was a different story. We had had a lovely time until the day before we were due to return home. I was pregnant at the time and suffered a miscarriage at the campsite. It was horrific having to walk across the field in pain to the communal toilets and trying to sort myself out in the showers.

Despite that (and it’s not something that can be laughed off like many of the horror stories) I am looking forward to our first camping trip since next year - especially as we’ll be taking our newborn with us (who will be about 9 months old by then).

Sorry didn’t mean to put a dampener on the thread - I was enjoying reading the stories. I guess what I am trying to say is that no matter how awful one camping trip is, doesn’t mean the rest will be. Remember what was terrible about it, find the solution and away you go!

I'm sorry to hear your story, vox. What a terrible situation to be in when it happened, with no private facilities . I'm glad it hasn't put you off going camping again - hope your 9 month old takes to life under canvas!

Not my story but a friends. She was newly married to her DH and her PIL invited her to join them in their camping holiday. It was a caravan on a campsite, so she thought it would be ok. Her DH had done these holidays with his parents for years all seemed good.

She turns up at the campsite and it was a nudist one! Her in laws were naked the whole time. Her DH was so used to these holidays he had forgotten to tell her.

I asked her how she coped with the weekend in a caravan with her nude in laws.... she said 'i spent the whole time looking straight ahead'.

On separate camping excursions

Sandstorm.
Covered in fire ant bites
Companion got 2nd degree burn on an isolated mountain.

Broken wrist and avalanche closed the only road to hospital.

Even my adorable daughter is never getting me to go camping again.

we had an awful one that turned out to be fantastic - were camping in Cornwall, and high winds ripped our tent end to end, so it was totally unusable. Some kind people in a campervan gave us the key to their house near Plymouth, so we spent a night there, made some phone calls, and spent the next week in a static caravan in Devon, on a lovely site. The owners of the original site gave us a credit note for the unused nights, so we had a 'free' week there the following year.

A few years ago we took the DC camping to a little place a few hours away, thinking we'd found a new passion in life.

DH woke ridiculously early each day because of the peacocks (which campsite on earth has actual peacocks strutting about the lawn making odd baby-human noises at 4am?) so he was super-mardy and short tempered.

DS2 was 3 at the time and had been dry day and night for six months or so when we went, but occasionally got up in the night to pee, so we'd taken his travel potty which folded up tightly and had a kind of 'suction' to ensure no peepee escaped. One night he got up and peepeed in the potty but also pooped; DH got up with him, dealt with it and everyone went back to sleep. The potty was in the awning part of the tent, which was also where the dog slept (this is relevant). At around 5am the following day I nudged DH and said "I can smell poop, can you?" and he shushed me and told me he needed more kip.

I unzipped the inner tent part and there, covered from head to toe with human shart was our previously ginger - though now totally brown - spaniel, eyes gleaming like she'd taken whizz. She'd discovered that the potty hadn't been closed thoroughly the night before and, being fond of an occasional roll in fox and sheep shit - decided to go one better and roll in DS2's poo. I was almost sick as I stood there with no idea where to even begin. We went home that day. Without the tent, the awning and the carpet that went in the awning. Sadly the twat dog had to come home with us, still brown despite being covered in fairy liquid and held under the campsite showers, and still smiling like it had been all of her christmases.

I will never take that dickhead dog camping again as long as I live.

@idontbelieve so funny!

Mine was first night away of a trip, also happened to be DP’s birthday. Had managed to get all 3 children fed and to bed, fire crackling, all is quiet and peaceful when I suddenly get an overwhelming feeling that things are not ok.

Severe gastro hit and I spent the entire night trying not to wake everyone up, the sound of my retching ringing through the forest and trying not to contaminate my 8 month old who I was breastfeeding through the night. It was a nightmare.