We finally bought a car late last year and have spent every weekend since exploring the area. I have plotted our favourite local destinations for a family day out onto a Google map. So if you are camping or new to Sussex, here are my ideas for days out with children. View Sussex days...
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A campfire should be at the centre of any camp yet few sites allow you to set one. Sussex is well-served for campfires, with Spring Barn Farm and Blackberry Wood being the closest places to allow them. For our annual “iPodival”, a gathering of a dozen adults and an ever-increasing haul of children, we...
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I spent yesterday in the British Library with The Campers’ Handbook by THH Holding, published in 1908. A sepia photograph shows us the author at camp; he is a chunky and kindly chap, grey at the temples and with an amenable unkempt moustache, relaxing in a straw boater and collarless white shirt with the...
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We went for a stroll around a camping fair held in a field at the back of Middle Farm, near Lewes. Dozens of tents were pitched for the inspection of prospective buyers, from the Vango Dart 200 – a pop-up festival tent – to the enormous Wolf Lake 7, a grand’s worth of polycotton...
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It’s the beginning of Bank Holiday weekend and the traffic into Dorset crawls past accident after accident. On the verge and in the central reservation, the beautiful dandy faces of cars faces have been bashed ugly, as if set upon by jealous brutes. The unlucky participants stand around dazed, compressing bumps and scrapes with...
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Math recently acquired a portable barbeque, the Weber Charcoal Go-Anywhere Grill. It has a pleasingly vintage shape, and is solidly constructed. We spent an afternoon at Homebase checking out the other portable barbecues, all of which felt rather neurotic and liable to fall apart in a complete collapse of nerve. The Weber has a...
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The BBC weather forecast is like my mother: it fears the worst. Some of the most beautiful weekends of my life were – as far as the BBC was concerned – big black clouds. I wonder if their weather predictions intentionally err on the side of caution to leave them less open to blame...
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Follow the track down into a clearing in the wood and there is a stage, a barbecue and the makings of a bonfire. On that stage, a young Amy Winehouse-lookalike in leopard-print dress, high black belt and fake tattoos is working through the hits with more precision than Amy herself can muster, these days....
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I woke up this morning on the floor of a Hackney flat overlooking London Fields. As I lay there, mind churning to restart, I considered the question of where to pitch a tent. On level ground free of stones or roots, with soil that is not so boggy as to indicate risk of flooding....
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The rule that there is always another island first struck me on the isle of Arran, which is further south than the Western Isles, directly west from Glasgow in Argyll. While staying in the southernmost pincer of Lamlash Bay on Arran, I looked out at the enormous hump of Holy Island, (not to be...
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