The New Stylish Holiday: Camping by Caroline Phillips

Camping is no longer the domain of boy scouts or the Peruvian socks and bean sprout brigade. Pitch your achingly fashionable Maharajas’ shikar tent in the right place, and you may find yourself sharing a charred organic burger with Jamie Oliver or Kate Moss. Select a good spot for your yurt (the voguish Mongolian nomads’ tent) and you could be roasting marshmallows around a camp fire with Damian Lewis or Sienna Miller.  Yes, sleeping al fresco is now as cool as the plastic Crocs clogs that jolly campers wear on their feet.

1.2 million Brits now choose camping as their main holiday. Understandably this number is growing fast. Post 9/11, people were less inclined to fly. Post Financial Armageddon, they can't afford to fly. And post the Ash crisis, even if they fly, they're worried that they can't get back. Plus there’s nostalgia for the British bucket and spade holiday; and a boom in green holidays, and little could be lower on carbon emissions than a domestic camping vacation. 

Camping Material

I’m not obvious camping material. My last adventure holiday took me to Bali. To the poolside of an Aman hotel, to be precise. Indeed, I’m a camping virgin and plan my deflowering carefully. My husband’s shopping list reads, ‘Tent, firelighters, Swiss army knife.’ To which I add, ‘Floral print Dosa and dotty Legacy frocks from The Cross.’ Fittingly the former costs more than our Stormlite family tent and the latter will look good crumpled. 

We arrive at our Cornish camp site. (No jet-lag. It’s in the same time zone as London.) The owner begs me not to name it.  It’s already full months in advance. “You need to be intelligent to find us,” she adds. “We like that self-selecting group.”

It’s near Hollywell Bay in a National Trust conservation area with a dramatic, wild coastline, containing part of 630 continuous miles of coast path.  Minutes away there’s Polly Joke beach with its glorious golden sand, rock-pools and Barbados perfect weather. Rabbits and fox cubs play in the fields, skylarks and a kestrel hover overhead and hardy cattle graze by the tents. Instead of exhaust fumes, the air smells of wild mint.

Back to Nature

It’s picnic nirvana. A seagull surveys campers greedily then steals my husband’s sausage, which saves me the trouble. Later we feast from our camp barbie, sharing burnt offerings with four Rudolph Steiner educationalists, a psychotherapist and two Suzuki violin teachers. Nothing tastes better than carcinogenic food when you've waited hours for it to cook. 

It's not just the food and back to nature aspect that is so appealing. There are dramatic white tipis, quaint tents with floral curtains and a classic mulberry VW camper van. Six dreadlocked surfer boys play touch rugby with a plastic Coke bottle. Soon our daughters are kicking a football and playing cricket with other mini campers. There’s no mobile phone signal, no electricity and not even solar-powered television. I don't grieve the absence of computer games, traffic and school runs.

Our neighbours are Mike Chattey and family.  A fundraiser for the Conservative party, he turned down a vacation in a villa near St Tropez to camp. His tent is a veritable mansion block; artist Christo used less material when he wrapped the Reichstag.  Nearby in her pre-perestroika Czech tent is Sue Charman. “I know how to make a draining board out of sticks snake- leashed,” explains this Oxford-educated former theatre director and erstwhile Girl Guide. 
 
Roberta Rose, a documentary maker, helps us put up our tent. “Toggle it up,” she says, introducing us to the joys of campspeak. “Mind the guy ropes. There’s water in the bladder.” Afterwards we try out our self-sufficient wind-up torch, solar powered shower and catch up with the test match on our purple solar-powered radio. Brilliant. I’ve also bought an inflatable mattress, organic bed roll and squishy camping mat. Later, on the principle of the princess, the pea and the mattress, I sleep blissfully on top of all of them. 

Innocent Pleasures

We learn to surf with British champ Lee Ryan and hang five, hang ten and perform the classic drop knee. Think Guinness advert. Well, actually, I just about catch my first wave. Then we take a lesson with another Lee (Griffin) wobbling on fluorescent foamies in spray- on Gul Wetsuits.  (So warm, I decide to sleep in mine.) What was a counterculture trickle has become a huge wave. 2010 will probably be a record year for surfing, and not just because I’ve joined the swell.

I marvel at such innocent pleasures. Soon I don’t know what time it is. I forget the day of the week. Life slows down pleasingly. I love the outdoor life, adventure and getting back to nature. Our children run around unattended, adoring the feral freedom. There's a professor who has been coming here annually since he was aged one. He’s now 61. Two years ago his son stayed. He bought his maid. I’m not surprised. After all, we’re all happy campers now.