What are your BEST and WORST camping experiences!

[BelleAtrix]

DH and I are packing for our trip next week, and its bringing back lots of memories - good and bad .

Best - Some disagreement here; I'm voting for the first time we 'comfort camped' in Cornwall (the bliss in a decent night's sleep under a duvet), dh is voting Glencoe (ok, cool pitch, but see below)

Worst - no one trip has been completely ruined, but we were nearly washed away in Glencoe, nearly blown away in the Norwegian mountains and nearly killed each other trying to get the farking MSR windpro stove working for the first time.

Next week is the first trip with ds - we're excited!! However, this is the first time we have a big tent, big stove, table, chairs etc etc - I think we need a trailer

What are yours?

Worst was in the lakes - i was 4 months preg and still a bit icky, i was supposed to be the ill one then dh woke at 1a, completely dissoriantated and feeling sick and sayig i need help i need help - i honestly thought he was having some sort of weird doo - turns out he was sleeping sloped down and it made him ill. We have not been proper camping since (we have been in a trailer tent) and am about to embark on first camping trip tomorow with toddler and 6 yr old - i fear i may be back to this thread as he is a very reluctant camper (dh that is).

The best was all of them well actually probably devon but i just love camping.

Have only had a few camping holidays so far but best was 11 years ago (before children came along), when we spent a week at a B&B in Torquay, then spent the following week going along the coast, ending up at my Grandmas at Brighton, doing a few nights camping, then a few nights in B&Bs, just turning up to see if these places had room for us. I look back on it as being a kind of 'Famous Five' type of thing to do.

The worst was probably the camping holiday we've just returned from at Cromer. I know that it's all about getting close to nature and can put up with most creepy crawlies, but I loathe earwigs and I was evicting them from the tent (and brought a few back with us yesterday!) morning and evening, to the point that we actually moved our tent away from undergrowth where I thought the little beasties hid! I also discovered how my idea of fun is not being in the middle of a field, on a slight hill at 1am, in the middle of a thunderstorm, watching lightning overhead through the tent canvas, immediately followed by storm force winds in which I thought the tent was going to become airborne, as happened Friday and Saturday morning.

That's definitely it for camping this year; I shall probably be persuaded by DH to do the whole thing again next year though!

When we arrived at the campsite the owners advised us that the nearest A&E was an hour's drive away

They also informed us that there was a security barrier across the entrance to the site, and that in an emergency at night we should wake them to raise the barrier.

As we hadn't been to A&E ever with our children we just filed the information.

ds2 fell off some play equipment just before bedtime, then went off to sleep. At 1 am after listening to him sobbing for about 2 hours, I realised his arm probably was broken.

We decided to wait until morning to take him to A&E. With no painkillers with us, that was a long night!

It turned out it was broken in two places, but we all survived the experience.

Both in campervan
Best was a spur of the moment stop over for a couple of nights in the New Forest. It was wild camping, not on a site, and was winter time. The deer and ponies were all coming right round the van and there wasn't another human around.
Worst, Devon. DD was nearly 2, not been walking long. We were parked on a slope and on nobbly ground. DD overtired the whole time from not settling at nights and was constantly falling and tripping and crying. Rained torrentially.

roisin thats awful! You need to follow that with a 'best' story surely you all dared to go again?!

bump

I'm a very green camper, but do have some best/worst experiences.

Best: 'free' camping in the sand dunes behind Calgary Beach on Mull, 2005. Utter peace and quiet, deserted beach (in June!), perfect weather (it was peeing it down everywhere else in the UK that week, too). Little campfire in front of tent: whisky, marshmallows and reading by natural light until 11. Bliss.

Worst: My first 'adult' camping at an archaeological dig, 1992. I had a crappy cheap ridgepole tent, the cheapest Millets did. I didn't know what the inner tent skin was for, so I pushed my bags against it to make more space. Everything I had with me was soaked and took 2 weeks to dry out, as it rained all the sodding time. I and some friends ended up sleeping on the floor of the shower block (on a dig full of smelly students - not to be recommended) because we were so damp and miserable.

Worst camping experience - HESFES - woken up by lots of silly teenagers drinking and crying and rowing all night every night - no respect for anyone else

Got attacked by midges - both feet swollen up to twice their size and on my own with 3 kids all very young - having to find a walk in nhs clinic to get some anti hisimine stuff whilst hardly being able to walk.

Good - well never been since and not likely to put me off for life!

riven - we asked for quiet spot and got stuck next to a teenager tent - on the last night a girl was out there all night - drunk, crying that her boyfriend hated her - he kept telling her to stop being silly and go to sleep - how i didnt go and do something terrible to her i dont know!

Mine are:

Best - first time camping in Pembrokeshire with dd1 and dd2. Weather fantastic all week - with a pitch overlooking the sea amazing.

Worst - same campsite 2 years later - we have pitched the tent wrong (doh!) which we realised when a puddle formed above the bedroom compartments in a particulaly wet moment. Cue dh ripping the tent in an attempt to sort the poles quickly - and a very large hole in the tent above the dds bedroom. Not a very happy camper! It took carfty covering over with a windbreak to keep the tent waterproof.

Best - touring the lake district, on foot with backpacks, with a boyfriend when I was about 20, sometimes wild camping. Lovely hot weather and it was so footloose and fun. Funny because I love my full-on camping these days with cornucopia of equipment and a massive tent, but that trip rocked.

Worst - cornwall a few years ago (the boscastle flood year!), pre-DC thank god - grim site, horrible rain and the most unbelievable wind, plus I was with 2 people who don't really like camping and felt horrendously guilty for suggesting it. Spent all night being buffeted from side to side to the sound of torrential rain.

Best: Two nights in Oxich, Swansea with friends, it rained the whole time but we were close enough to go to their house and shower mid way through.

Worst: Bloody awful Park Resorts place in IOW, never ever again, put me off for life.

I couldn't possibly choose one best trip, no way.

I guess the worst was a week spent in devon last summer, it rained non-stop every single day, but actually it wasn't so bad once we accepted that we would be wet we had a great time, we even still went to the beach and swam in the sea, it was quite liberating. Once you're wet you're wet and then you can get on with enjoying yourself again!

My hands and feet did go numb though.

best - wild camping on a beach in scotland, that you can only realistically get to by boat. there were 6 of us and we went abit feral for the weekend.
worst - ardnamurchan - pregnant and midgies

The best trips are the ones I did as a child, with my parents, all wild camping. Especially memorable is the three months we spent driving across the North coast of Turkey, all the way up to Russia, camping each night at beautiful spots, often on the beach, or the numerous weekends we spent camping in the empty quarter.

The worst wasn't actually that wet week in Devon, it was the time I camped with a friend and her husband and two kids and the husband spent the whole time shouting at his kids to be quiet

My worst was when Rosie the pig decided to come and join me inside our individual portaloo tent.

Ever tried shooing away a pig with your knickers down?

Bit of a shock, that one!

On the same site, a herd of cows decided to stampede downhill towards and past our caravan.

Watching through the window as they veered to the side at the last minutes was quite....

errr...

exhilarating

worst experience - waking up with slugs in my hair when camping as a teenager

oh, i love calgary bay!

best - every single backpacking trip pre-kids. mountains. weather. silence. oo, especially the one where the older italian chap spent the evening showing me his etchings the stars whilst sharing the contents of his hip flask...

worst - 300 feet up on a cliff over a river canyon in torrential storm. 3 other tents on site. in the morning, ours was the only one still standing. two had been 'lost' into the canyon during the night (fortunately not with their inhabitants lol), and the third had given up and taken it down and slept in the car...

• or the night spent 'accidentally' under canvas on salisbury plain with no sleeping bag, having spent until 2am looking for a 'lost' group of air cadets

boak @ slugs

worst - when we woke up in the morning to find our food preparation area cheap, flimsy gazebo had blown on top of the car (which was new at the time, grrr) - luckily no damage but the seagulls had eaten our croissants, which were in their own packaging inside a carrier bag inside the gazebo!! Greedy gits!

Best moment, not anything in particular but just that clear headed, fresh feeling you get when you wake up in the morning after sleeping outdoors Love it!

Best: West coast of Scotland plus Glencoe -which is very beautiful. Excellent weather and fantastic deserted beaches, brilliant seafood.

Worst: second camping trip with DS who was 2.5. Up at 5:00am, with DS squawking and chasing around the campsite, impossible to keep him quiet. We stayed 1 night and came home.