Open Writing

“Let’s go up to the caravan,” said my husband. “But the schools aren’t back yet, the place will be packed,” I replied. However off we set for Golden Bay, We hadn’t been there for over a year so were missing the place. The last week of the summer holidays and perfect weather.

Our impression of Tukurua is a few retired folk in caravans, folk whom we had got to know over the years, and the overseas tourists, rolling in in their campervans, with interesting tales to tell. A nice pleasant well organised place with freshly cut grass and warm blue sea beckoning swimmers and fishermen alike.

We arrived and “canvas town” met our eyes. The areas normally closed when we are there were now open and tent cities had grown. Kids were everywhere, cricket matches, bikes hurtling around and canoes out in the bay. Barbeques at night and the endless twanging of guitars.

We had seen postcards of “Summer Holiday Time,” in Golden Bay but never been here. However everyone was having a great time, the kids were fun to watch and the kitchen and ablution areas well organised, we had prebooked our favourite site so all was well. But my, things have changed since the days of our old ridge tent.

We wandered round the camp site, now three times its normal size, and looked at what people call tents, Tents? Mini bungalows, and not so mini at that. Two and three bedrooms, living rooms, big awnings and linking gazebos with the tent next door. You could imagine yourself walking down a street in suburbia if it hadn’t been for the light weight, brightly coloured material which these modern day, so called tents, are made of, with their sewn in ground sheets and fly screens. No “don’t touch the sides,” or crawling in through the door. The gazebos and awnings held fridge freezers and proper cookers, plus separate ablution areas. No roughing it here, you could play badminton in the undercover areas if it was raining and I am surprised they hadn’t thought of car ports. But where did it all fit when they went home?

Then the cyclists, the long distance, heads down, bottoms up, multi-geared brigade, rolled in at night and on the smaller sites along the sea’s edge they parked their bikes and unpacked what resembled a “pac-a-mac.” Do you remember those? Click, click, and two large hoops formed, inner tent, with ground sheet and door firmly stitched in, hung on the inside, outer fly sheet, with large igloo entrance, flung over the top and home is ready, five minutes flat and they are off to the showers for a clean up and then settle down to an evening meal in the kitchen/dining room.

I remember the days of our heavy canvas ridge tent, the tent we had when we were first married. With our packs on our backs, heavy army type packs with wooden frames, and the tent and the bedding rolled on top, we would set off for Grassington for a few days walking in the Dales. Happy days! We would stagger off the bus and walk down to the river to put up our tent, no fancy campsites in those days, you got your water from a stream and cooked over a campfire or a primus and your light was a tilley lamp.

We would choose our site carefully, no tree roots or rocks, the days of airbeds had not arrived. Once the site was chosen we would decide which way the tent would lie. In would go the posts and up would go the tent and the struggle to get the guy lines just right, allowing for what would happen if it rained. Then the fly sheet, not one of these all over things, just one sheet and “don’t let it touch the sides.” We never got it right first time. After that down went the ground sheet, a bit of tarpaulin cut to size. “Let’s hope it doesn’t rain.” “Dig a trench round the tent for the water to run away.” Finally in would go the sleeping bag, the eiderdown off our bed fastened together with safety pins. No awning to put your pack in, that had to fit in beside you or under the fly sheet and you certainly didn’t have a fridge or chilly bin for your food. A tin of stew or baked beans was your tea and, if you were lucky, a tin of pears and carnation milk. Night would come and after a quick wash in the river you would settle down under your inadequate eiderdown and try to sleep, hoping it wouldn’t rain or worse still freeze or a gale get up.

With cold red fingers you would crawl from your tent in the morning and make porridge for breakfast then scour your pan with gravel from the river. All set and off you would go with your pack of sandwiches for a day’s walk in the Dales, knowing for certain your tent would be there on your return, unless some inquisitive cow decided to knock it down. If it rained you got wet, if it was misty you walked through the mist, if it blew you put your head down against the wind, but you always returned feeling that you had had a good day.

Once we got our little Morris Minor we could head further afield, up into our beloved Scotland, later to become our home, with our same little ridge tent, but we did have the car for shelter on wet nights and if we turned the engine on we had the heater, we were moving upmarket.

After we had moved to Scotland and our children had arrived we began to wander overseas. Our tent was now a frame tent with a bedroom and dining area and we had a little trailer to pack all our gear in. Things were looking up and we would head off for Scandinavia and Lapland or the Austrian and Italian Alps. Now we stayed on campsites with swimming pools and hot showers and after a good day’s walk in the mountains the kids loved nothing more than to jump in the pool, as indeed did we. What great times we had and how fit and full of energy we were.

But to get back to modern day canvas city. Every year groups of friends meet up at places like Tukurua for the school holidays. No longer are holes dug for hips, full size beds are assembled and duvets flung over them, portable wardrobes are unloaded and TVs and computers. What would children do without their computer games? No, proper camping is over. Luscious smells of steak frying reach your nostrils and you look at fresh salads and baked potatoes, not the ones we extracted from blackened embers. Bottles of chilled wine and beer come out of the fridges and anti-pasta plates are laid out filled with oysters and such. These people don’t know what they have missed, this isn’t camping.

However packing up day has to arrive and so I return to “where does it all go?” The place becomes a demolition site. The canvas comes down, or rather the nylon, waterproof, siliconised stuff, which has taken its place. It is carefully folded and packed into light weight bags. Then down comes the scaffolding, there is no other word for it. The kids play their part here; flick, flick, flick and it all folds up into nice aluminium sections. But fridges, beds, mattresses etc? The flat deck emerges from behind the hedge. Dad loads it all on and covers it with a tarpaulin, straps the canoes on the top and fixes the bikes on the back, while mum piles the kids in the car and off they go until next year.

No camping isn’t what it used to be. We settle back in our little caravan with all its mod. cons. and wait for our friends to arrive, our holiday is just about to start but it has been an interesting interlude. Let’s pour a gin and tonic and enjoy the sunset in peace.