Not going glamping

So it was last weekend. It was a bit wet, and it looked like it was going to get an awful lot wetter. And we had decided to go camping.

No, let’s be accurate. (For once.) Mrs D had decided to go camping. Weeks ago, when it was far hotter.

The rest of us had agreed to go camping. Not decided. There’s a subtle difference.

We were only going for one night, and we were only going five miles up the road. But by the time we’d loaded up giant tent, floppy awning, wonky-looking gas stove and enough bedding for a princess and several very knobbly peas, the car and its rooftop box were straining at the seams and making the sort of noises you normally associate with one of those Second World War films where the submarine dives 20 fathoms deeper than its designer ever meant it to.

Wet.

We head east out of town, regularly checking the rear-view mirror for the progress of the looming clouds behind us.

We arrive at the campsite two minutes ahead of the weather. By the time we’ve confirmed the booking with the management, the heavens have opened and we’re stuck in the car playing I-Spy-type word games with a pair of teenagers who seem more than a little disenchanted with their lot in life.

Wet wet. No filters were used in the production of this photograph.

Eventually the rain eases from a torrent to a heavy shower and we get the tent up, a fire lit and a barbecue cooked. And to be fair, the sky clears and the evening passes merrily as we watch meteors and satellites scoot overhead.

But at four o’clock on Sunday morning we hear the call of the wild. Or rather a call of nature, which urgently requires yours truly to stagger out of the tent and into the nearby bushes.

Where he stumbles over a large rock that certainly wasn’t there before and definitely had no right moving there at that ungodly hour.

Thus it was that we returned from our night in deepest Wiltshire with: one damp tent; four soggy pillows; two disgruntled teenagers; and a bruise on your correspondent’s right thigh of a width, length and mottled purple lividity never previously recorded by any branch of medical science.

Glamping? It wasn’t.