Reading Susan Fletcher & Catherine Cox recently brought back waves of memories of family camping holidays, which for me are mostly of pure joy rather than embarrassment & disaster.
Our first camping holiday was in the summer I was 7. My father had just acquired his second car – an army surplus jeep-type vehicle which at that stage still had its canvas-covered rear section. My sister & I were to sleep in this while mummy & daddy slept in a proper tent.
We went to a farm which welcomed campers, according to the guide book of the British Camping & Caravanning Club. We were to go to the same farm once a year for the next 8 years.
It was owned & run single handed by the widowed Mrs Davis, a spare woman with a weather beaten face whom we loved. She let us help her milk the cows & introduced me to the sophistication of eating tomatoes sliced thinly, sprinkled with sugar & vinegar, accompanied by good Welsh bread spread liberally with butter.
In that first year, at least, the water supply came from a venerable cast iron stand pipe with a pump handle which stood in the field next to the road. The only toilet was a chemical closet under a wooden bench seat in an outhouse. Each morning we would carry our 2 enamel pails to the back door of the farm to collect fresh (from the cow) milk.
We camped in one of the two middle fields – whichever was lying fallow that year, in the shelter of the hedge. I cannot remember many other campers to begin with, & though the numbers gradually picked up over the years the field was never full.
The third field was always planted with a cereal or left for hay. We walked carefully round its edge to reach the cliff-top pathway, from where we could scramble down to what was virtually a private cove. Great for sunbathing, shrimping & swimming, but under water when the tide came in.
