We had a camping holiday recently – our first in four years or so. We were blessed with brilliant weather and a great location and we loved the week we had, but, being a thoughtful person, there were a few thoughts I had about the camping experience that I thought I’d jot down.
Why don’t campsites have water boilers?
Seriously. This should be a thing. Campsites have toilets and showers and washing up points. Electrical heaters of various sorts. Some of which made very hot water.
So I wondered…why is it that campsites don’t have those on-demand water boilers? So much gas must be used up boiling water on camping stoves. And we put so much effort into managing our supply of hot water (filling a super-insulated flask with hot water the night before so you don’t have to wait for your morning cuppa).
I’d gladly pay a little extra to stay on a campsite that has a boiler I can just walk up to and get boiling water out of.
Someone do this, please?! And make it standard for campsites everywhere!!
Campsite life
One thing I love about campsites is the huge mix of people you get. I find that camping attracts people from a much greater variety of walks of life than hotels and holiday parks.
And while everyone gets on pretty nicely, there’s etiquette and both spoken (or write) and unspoken rules.
I do sometimes think it would be good to do a documentary of life on a campsite. An outdoor version of Big Brother with a diary room where people can come in and air their grievances about that thing the people on the pitch next-door did.
Or where people get interviewed about why they have come. We met all sorts of interesting people. A woman camping on her own for the first time who was between jobs. An aunt who was taking her nephew and niece camping for the first time, hoping she can be trusted by the parents to do it again. Stuff like that.
It seems everyone has a story and it would be interesting to have it documented.
Just not on MY holiday, thank you! ?
Swapping indoor and outdoor time
As most parents, we have a constant struggle with “screen time” with our children. We feel it’s pretty under control here. We’ve created some good rules. But seeing how much our kids love being outdoors when camping I wondered…
What if we swapped the rule? If we said that they could have as much indoor and screen time as they wanted, but that their outdoor time was limited to an hour a day. Would that make the outdoor time something that they craved?
Probably not. But maybe an interesting experiment for some time in the future.