Best things you have watched on a campsite?

[Milliways]

We have been away lots this year, currently at our 12th site.

I love people watching, usually tents going up and down etc but this site has the 2nd wedding reception we have come across and it is fancy dress! It is a Forest site, so lots of little girls as fairy nymphs (bridesmaids?) but there is a Peter Pan, a pirate, a very large fairy with huge wings (mother of bride we think) a Coldstream guard and lots more. It has been pouring with rain but thankfully clearing up now so lots if colourful characters playing frisbee and football in a clearing, and walking across the sure to the loos.

What is the best thing you have witnesses on a site?

Oh, Slubber, those are hilarious :o

All I have to offer is camping a few years back at Latitude and hearing a father berate his children (about 8 or 9 at the time) for being 'bored'.

"you are the most UNGRATEFUL, INCONSIDERATE children in the WORLD!" he hissed in that 'I am trying to be reasonable but am in fact very very angry' voice that carries for miles via canvas. "What your mother and I have DONE to DESERVE such INGRATES for children I have NO IDEA! We've done what you want ALL DAY! We've been to the PUPPET THEATRE! We've been FACEPAINTING! We've BALANCED ROCKS!!!"

Lovecat, that is hysterical (and how we have all felt to some degree without letting it all out in public)

Last year at Sandy Balls at family arrived at the pitch opposite us with their caravan. To set up the awning they parked their car right along side the caravan, then stood on its roof to feed the awning through the rail bit. They didnt move the car until the awning was up and they were zipping the last wall on.

I love it when you see people hang fake hanging baskets/topiary balls from there caravans

@ Lovecat. Classic.

TeddyBeau - so they were putting up a garage!

One year there was a huge group of campers, 50th birthday partying but with children and grandchildren and friends.
Fairy lights round the tents and gazebos.
One of the group, an enormous very hairy man, had a proper Punch and Judy set and did magic tricks too for all the kids at the site.
They also had the best hog roast thingy I've ever seen.
They were a bit noisy but no one actually cared and the kids slept through anyway.

Wow, that would be my DH's ideal way to spend his 50th!

I remember watching a couple having a huge row whilst putting up a gazebo. They were having a good old shouting match, then one of them drove off in a fit of temper, came back a couple of hours later and they carried on arguing. Was very entertaining

I watched a fox saunter into a scout marquee and steal a box of oxo cubes. He came back for some burger buns later.

Once we were camping in wales and a heard of sheep got away from a farmer and legged it onto our field!

It was very interesting watching him shout stuff in welsh and the sheepdog efficiently rounding them all up again.

When we went camping in the new forest I had one of those surreal film moments where I had a pee in a bush and ended up running down the road with my pants and trousers round my knees. The next night a bloody horse had a wee on our tent!! We watched! I figure he was getting his own back.

Just come back from a lovely site in Belgium where all was well apart from the family next door who would go out for the evening, return at 11pm then start driving remote controlled cars up and down the road for the next hour! There was a speed hump right outside our tent and you wouldn't believe the noise those cars made as they hit it. Very odd/antisocial behaviour. They were as quiet as church mice all day though.

Years ago we were camping near Malvern. Family arrived and began to set up their tent on the pitch next to us, got it all the way up then started taking it down again. We were bemused, dh thought they might have decided they didn't want to be next to 18mo ds1 after all, so I just asked nicely "Was it something we said?!"

Turns out it was the first time they'd ever pitched that tent, and it wasn't until it was all the way up they realised it was inside out, with the guys on the inside

I took the DC camping with a couple of friends and their DC last year to lovely, basic little site that had a communal firepit.

As the afternoon passed and the evening approached we had marshmallows at the ready but before we (or any other family) could get to the firepit to get it started a guy who we nick-named Ray Mears got there first.

Trouble was he was desperate to show his DC how you could start a fire without matches or a lighter. Well, of course he couldn't do it and wouldn't give in.....dinner time came and went....the sun started setting.....children were in onesies ready for bed......and bloody Ray Mears still wouldn't take the hint from all these other campers giving him the evil eye whilst tired children deprived of toasted marshmallows sobbed!

Needless to say the next night someone else got in there first!

I'd have had to push him out of the way and tell him to stop twatting about and let someone have a go who knew what they were doing norbert!

I an loving all these!
A horse peeing on your tent redefines the HH rating!
How do you get a tent inside out?
and the Ray Mears - DH said he would have dropped some parafin in and accidently let a spark fly

Lovecat That could have been us on one of those holidays with kids where they are just, well, ungrateful. But never at camping though.

Once we had a family who had an Oscar: "Oscar don't do this" "Oscar darling please come here ... Oscar come here .... NO OSCAR!!!", "Oscar stop that at once" etc. Never witnessed cute little Oscar doing anything dubious though.

We had a cute little Brucie next door but it was a dog. Poor Brucie was constantly nagged very loudly by his owners but it seemed to be beyond their wit to put him on a lead so we had them at 6.30 every am calling, whistling and clapping bloody Brucie who basically ignored them, probably to protect his own sanity. He looked sweet though. I began to harbour fantasies of bludgeoning them to death with their own camping mallet and stealing Brucie away as an act of mercy. Possibly not the best thing for people to see on a campsite though...

We used to take our hockey sticks camping in France :). Whenever we arrived somewhere people used to look on in horror as all 4 of us dc decamped from the car, my dad used to organise us all in putting up tents as if it were a military expedition, my mother used to sit in the car reading the paper till it was all done!

Love these. I was thinking of you, slubber, as a small group of us helped to up pegs on the bell and walk it to higher ground out of the flash flood lake it was submerged in (thankfully still dry, thank you the mnetters who recommended soul pad and their bathtub groundsheet).

I seem to recall at some point a thread about someone giving birth at a campsite, but a wedding sounds so much less traumatic.

Memories of a whole fucking birthday party of 80 setting up camp around mine and a few other tents at a peaceful part of a quiet campsite and having a jazz festival over the weekend. Would have been lovely if the bastards hadn't gone on through the night and become abusive when I asked at 2am if they would kindly shut the fuck up.

I once shared a campsite with a Tolkien reenactment society, all seemed lovely during the day but at dusk they all dressed up and ran around the woods screaming, fighting and generally scaring me wit-less!!

Watching a whole flock of birds swirling and swooping and dancing around the sky in a moving piece of nature's artwork at dusk.
Magic.

Hetty that sounds brilliant!

I now want to join a Tolkein re enactment society....

One Guide camp we had had a number of visits from a foxy family. In a fit of desperation and protecting the supply of cakes of which they seemed particularly found, my co-leader lead a fierce team of Guides across the site banging spatulas and billy lids at the "eyes" glinting in the firelight. Turned out to be a plate bag with reflective bits on.

I couldn't talk to her without laughing for days. Happened 15 years ago and still makes me chuckle to myself.