I hate cool camping

[CerealOffender]

all the really nice campsites are now booked out with buntingtastic nobs.... bah!

define cool!!

i like argyllshire. there is a nice one at the foot of the cobbler. and the campsite at tayvalich is lovely if you don't mind lots of statics. we have a van now so lots of the poncey yurtastic ones don't allow us (sob!)

Was camping last weekend too. Bit spoiled by big group next door with bunting AND camper vans AND ladies who wore floaty dresses and hunter wellies and came straight out of timotei ad but who were pissed at 6pm and who left baby to cry from about 5am and then proceeded to play (and I used the word loosely) banjo! But we decided to be very zen about it. And now breathe....

When do the midges leave Scotland? That's what puts me off going camping there.

So this thread's gone all quiet for the BH weekend - did we all go camping, without Blackberries or any other infernal contraptions?

You can come and wild camp with me.

I guarantee rain, mountains, the sea, and The Prodigy on tour.

Copious amounts of red wine. If you provide the victoria sandwich.

We had a fab camping weekend. Popup tents, table tennis, patchwork quilts, solar lights, bbq in the firepit, hens wandering round and 'wild' canoeing on the river a mile away.

Erm the tents were in our back garden, but it was gorgilicious. Must say, the facilities were the best we've had for some time :)

we had a group of bell tents, acres of bunting,sheepskin rugs/woven baskets/fairy lights, 4x4s,man with top hat and ladies who changed outfits at least a dozen times a day (approx -white linen dresses) camped near our very utilitarian set up which had dh snorting and me quite green with the prettiness

• until they all abandoned camp in the howling gale and inches of rain which trashed the bell tents and we were dry and cosy in our tent which did not make dh say "told you so" a lot no...

they were good fun though and at least a few of them had been camping for a few years though their pegs and guys were rubbish!

Off to france next year rain just outlasted dry too much this time.....

We had 2 weeks in Glasgow, well just outside in Strathclyde Park and had a fantastic couple of weeks. We were out and about and doing things even in the rain. Marred slightly on one weekend by a coach load of German students and a coach load of French students who ran riot and trashed a couple of the toilet blocks and made a so much piggin' noise. I only booked it 10 days before we went.

Came home for 5 days and booked for a week in Cornwall, smallish site with a heated swimming pool. Spent the week either in the pool or on the beach, having a fantastic time. Though again marred by a group who came back at 10 o'clock and proceded to talk and laugh loudly, have belching contests and have the radio on untill midnight. When it looked like it was going to happen the next night I went and asked the site manager to talk to them.

So it is possible to get a site at short notice but you do have to put up with some oiks.

Why is that, though? Are you suggesting that the fact a site has vacancies might imply it's going to have a higher 'oik-factor'?

We went to a pre-set-up tent in Jersey in the first week of the summer hols, booked 4 days before hand, and, though the site itself was lovely, we were surrounded by Oiks from Birmingham (not that their home-town really matters!)... To be fair I suspect the problem was that whereas we were combining the camping experience with being on an -ahem- beach holiday, they were there for the 'cheap' accommodation the tents provided thus had no idea how to behave,

The sites we have been to before we have generally researched to distruction and I have had no problems with them. These two were last minute and we had problems. Whether that is connected or not I don't know but.......