10 things camping brings
By
Simon Ingram
Features
11 April 2008 09:00
1 Enforced intimacy
“Crikey, small isn’t it? And it’s definitely a two-man? Really? Wow. Looked bigger than that in the photo. So both of us are going to have to…right, yep. So which side do you want? Shall we go top to tail, or… [cough]…head to…oh, we’ll figure it out when we’re in there. So…do you want to go first, or, um…[cough]”
2 The realisation that nature is a crock
Plick. Plick. Plickaplickaplickaplickaplishhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
We all know this feeling. After a day of dry and sun, the second tent peeps from stuffsack, the black clouds converge like vultures on a lion kill. That’s the cue for calm air to liven into a banshee of crosswinds, assaulting you from multiple directions to make pitching your tent less dignified than juggling mud.
3 Zip distress
How many zips does the damn tent need? Unzip your sleeping bag. Unzip zip one of the mozzie net doors. Why is it still zipped? Ah. Zip two zips it shut again, so you have unzip zip two just to get to zip one of the inner zip door, which is all the way over the other side of the tent so you grab zip two of the outer door zip to find it’s snagged on the mozzie net so you have to go back to zip zip one and unzip zip that zip and then zip…the outer zips. Grrrr. Knife! Now!
4 Mystifying moisture
I mean, really, aren’t tents supposed to keep you dry? Between the beads of condensation hanging like gargoyles from the ceiling, the see-saw canals that scurry up and down the sides of the tent with every movement, the is-it-wet-or-just-really-cold patting of the tent floor and the dew that’s everywhere the second you wake up, you really may as well save pack-weight and sleep in the rain…
5 The fear
Snrike.
“Roy! Whawastha?”
Ssssssnrike.
“There it is again! Wake up, will you?”
Of all the things rational thought tells you it could be – a fox, a bird, the snot creaking around in Roy’s sinuses – you just know that whatever goes ‘snrike’ in the Snowdonia night is definitely a large monster with a perverse interest in your tent and its occupants. What else could it be?
