I was wearing a thermal vest, long johns and thick hiking socks. To go outside, I would need footwear. In the corner of the tent, my boots – which require some lacing – and next to them, a pair of sandals. I gazed down at my stockinged feet, back at the sandals, and then at my sleeping wife:

Could I do it? Could I wear sandals and socks?

Edward Carpenter modelling his sandals with socks

Sandals and socks are reviled because they are a philosophical cop-out. The sock we associate with the shoe, with keeping one foot in the compromises and confinements of city life. The sandal yearns for the simple life, the toes wriggling free and tickled by spears of dewy meadow grass. To put a sock between the foot and the sandal is an ugly compromise.

Although Edward Carpenter could cast off the repressive expectations of Victorian society, he could never quite take off his socks

The shoe is a “leather prison” for the toes. So declared Edward Carpenter, a free-thinking socialist of the late Victorian period who was responsible for introducing the sandal into bohemian culture. A friend sent Carpenter two pairs of Kashmiri sandals from India, and he set about copying the design and distributing them to contemporary free-thinkers, in partnership with George Adams who he set up as sandal maker-in-chief.

Carpenter was gay, overtly so. His discretely circulated pamphlets did much to prepare the ground for what a same sex comradeship might be in the modern world. Born in Hove and educated at Cambridge, he set up home in Millthorpe in the countryside beyond industrial Sheffield, attracted both by the radical potential of the labour movement and by the sexual potential of the labourers. He met one such labourer, George Merrill, on a train. The two men enjoyed an open relationship, and Millthorpe became a site of pilgrimage for seekers of the simple life.

How would the spectacle of me in socks and sandals affect my wife?  The marriage would survive, but it is likely that her libido would not

Although Edward Carpenter could cast off the repressive expectations of Victorian society, he could never quite take off his socks. Photographs of the lean bearded “Saint in Sandals” show him wearing them with socks pulled up to the knee. Freedom was more important that the restrictions of style: he dispensed with waistcoats, underlinen and ties and wore instead a minimal outfit of woolly shirt, coat and pants. His sandals cost 10s 6d, less for children, and were a symbol of belonging to the progressive cause.

All these thoughts assailed me on that cold night in my tent. How would the spectacle of me in socks and sandals affect my wife? I wasn’t worried about the damage that it might do to our marriage. Our marriage has solid economic underpinnings, and there are children involved. The marriage would survive, but it is likely that her libido would not. I checked that she was soundly asleep, and then carefully slipped on the sandal.

Archeological analysis of fibres found on Roman sandals suggest that when the soldiers were in colder climes, such as Britain, the sandal was worn with socks

The sensation was obscene. The thickness of the sock caused the strap of the sandal to tighten indecently around the foot. The sandal was a Birkenstock, a German family company who made contoured shoes contemporaneous with Edward Carpenter’s sandal business. The German people are associated with the sandal and the sock combination, a Teutonic assertion of pragmatism over aesthetics. One wonders if they even remove their white ankle socks during intercourse.Birkenstocks did not get into sandals until 1965 during the American revival of the simple life or hippy movement.

The sandal was mankind’s first article of footwear. In the age of Homer, both sexes wore a wooden sole fastened to the foot by thongs. The Mogollon Indian in Southwest America plaited their sandals from the leaves of the Yucca tree. In Roman times, the sandalium worn by women was a sole with a piece of leather covering the toes and was worn mainly indoors. The soldiers of the Emperor wore the caliga, a heavy and high-laced boot that was open at the toe. Archeological analysis of fibres found on Roman sandals suggest that when the soldiers were in colder climes, such as Britain, the sandal was worn with socks.

Today the British army issue sandals that are man-made with velcro fastenings. Far more appealing than these are the Northwest Frontier Chaplis worn by the Indian army during campaigns in the 1930s; with two thick leather straps crossing a tongue, only the merest peep of the toes is visible, thereby sparing passersby the sight of your ten blind blunt-headed worms.
In my sandals and socks, I went out into the night to heed the call of nature. It was the moment before the moment before dawn, and the land seethed with anticipation. Carpenter and his sandals stand for the lost mystical socialism of Albion; a place where the working man and the high-minded type could join together to exceed the bounds of the acceptable and push away the deadening influence of mindless consumerism. This mystical socialism did not survive the Second World War. Sandal-wearing cranks were seen as an impediment to the credibility of socialism. George Orwell famously railed against “every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac… in England.”
In his essay On Sandals and Simplicity, GK Chesterton also took the sandal-wearers to task. He complained that advocates of the simple life would make us simple in the things that do not matter – diet, costume, etiquette – and complex in the things that do – philosophy and spirituality. The mystical socialist believed in plain living and high thinking. Chesterton, the scruffiest man in England, corpulent and windblown, sought the opposite: high living and plain thinking.
In my socks and sandals, I walked across the meadow to the witchy silhouettes of the copse, where I satisfied the masculine urge to urinate against the vertical. The black tops of the trees thrashed around in a bohemian dance. Grainy bands of indigo lay over the land. I felt the spirit of vitality move within me, the urge to cast off all clothing and to run amok as a natural animal. The wind goaded the tree tops into complete self abandonment. Would I join them?
No. Donning the sock and sandal was a transgression that threatened my very being! What next: speedos in the office? Trainers? The age of mysticism is past. I tromped back across the meadow, removed my sandals and cast them into the undergrowth. Never again would I be tempted by the comfortable compromise of the sock and sandal. From that night onward, my toes would serve out a life sentence in brogue and Brasher boot.

I have camped at Glastonbury for two consecutive years with my three children and will do so again this year. I have some insights to share with other Dads who might consider attempting the festival with their children:

1) Camp high
As a performer, I camped backstage at the Park, on a high pitch overlooking the festival, close to the fence. The effort involved in hauling the gear uphill was offset by the relative peace and quiet of the spot throughout the festival. If I was going there as a common-or-garden Dad punter, I would aim far away and high.

2) Take a wheelbarrow or trolley
Hauling your gear from car to site is a difficult and unpleasant experience if you’ve got a big family tent and all the extra beds and sleeping bags that come with children. Glastonbury has metal reinforced pathways that are wide and hard enough to take a large trolley or barrow. The walk from car to campsite for me was about half an hour. I had to make two trips. I would struggle to carry my tent more than ten minutes on my back. Keep a tight rein on the amount of gear you are taking. Take some rope to secure your gear to the barrow and some string to tie all the sleeping bags and mats together.

3) Cooking
I never used to cook at festivals but these days finances mean we have to bring all our food with us. So what to take? We live off a big home-cooked chicken pie and sausage rolls, large jars of homemade pesto with bags of pasta, and a bag of croissants. You can’t wash up easily at Glastonbury, and you don’t want to lug a coolbox there, so I avoid meat and food that requires anything more complex than heating a pan of water. Don’t stop off at Tescos on your way there, as then you will have to carry thin shopping bags across the festival.

4) Kids’ field
Bugaboo hell. None of the parents we travelled with enjoyed the kids’ field. First of all, who wants to sit around watching their children do stuff? Secondly, children aren’t going to learn to juggle in the hour or two you spend there. I’d rather see family experiences more integrated with the festival such as…

5) House of Fairy Tales
Established by artists Deborah Curtis and Gavin Turk, the House of Fairy Tales is “a child-centred artist led project which draws on an extensive team of artists, performers, writers, educationalists, designers, musicians, film makers, dreamers and philosophers to create magical, parallel worlds where learning is play and play is directed learning.” The people at the House of Fairy Tales are one highlight of Glastonbury and my three children get thoroughly involved. Last year Doctor Who himself, Matt Smith, dropped by and was photographed with all the kids.The House of Fairy Tales is located in the Park area.

6) The Park
Established by Emily Eavis in 2007, the Park is ideal for Dads. The bar is not so packed, the stage is full of interesting and alternative acts (all the bands I want to see – in Glastonbury 2011, that’s James Blake, Tame Impala, John Grant), and you are well out of the maddening throng. Also the Free University of Glastonbury is in the Park area – I am talking about the history and meaning of camping there on Sunday at 1pm.

7) But what about the headliners?
I didn’t see any of the big acts. I’ve been in those crowds without kids. I couldn’t face them with small children. One of the consequences of taking kids with you is that you are excused Must Seeing the Must See events. I wouldn’t cross the road to watch Bono sing, never mind jostle for position amongst thousands of other people. Free yourself of festival fret – that feeling that something better is happening somewhere else and you must trudge off to see it.

You sound like a really dull man
I am speaking only from the Dad perspective here, from that portion within me concerned with the logistics of shifting a family around. But it’s a fair comment.

9) When should Dads arrive at Glastonbury, and when should they leave?
Judging arrival and departure is the real trick. Over the last few years, because of the recession and the poor rate of exchange with the euro, many people take Glastonbury as their holiday. This skews the usual traffic patterns, with lots of people arriving on a Wednesday. I aim to arrive around 11am on Thursday morning. and have never any problems and barely any delay. We leave on Sunday about 4-5pm and likewise there is no queue. To put that in perspective, my mate spent six hours in the car park on Monday. Six hours! Fortunately he did not have his children with him

10) Buggy?
We went for two backpacks in which to haul the children around, each packed up with wet and hot weather gear. Just don’t take a buggy that runs on casters, as I saw a lot of Dads digging the mud and grass out from the wheels. My reasoning is that a buggy will struggle in the really deep Glasto mud. The last two years have been dry. But it won’t always be so.

My children transport my camping gear

I consulted with Cath as to what was required – a second large Billy Can, a new water carrier, a batch of very large hiking socks – and went to work on Simply Hike. I whizzed around the site and filled up the virtual shopping basket in no time. The site is well-designed and resolute; the gear videos are useful, the range is extensive enough to even include the extra-large socks that I require, and now all that remains is the true test of any online store: delivery.

[Update: Everything arrived at my door fine and on-time]

Two baby backpacks with rain cover and rain suit

1. Sleeping
Where will they sleep? Tiny babies who can’t roll over go in Samsonite pop-up cots and then their larger bubble cot, which accommodates them until they are 18 months old. Vaude and Little Life also make good travel cots to use from birth to about two years old.

Keeping children warm at night is crucial. Each of my babies slept in a double-layered sleeping bag with zip-on sleeves. Doubling or tripling the number of children in one room also keeps them warm – like gerbils. I take small sheepskin rugs to go under the cot for extra insulation. For older children, thermarest trail mats suffice. They do not require as much puff as a standard blow-up bed.
Tents are hot places in the day, making afternoon naps a problem; I often wheeled the baby around in the buggy, letting them nod off as and when. A sun shade for the buggy is essential.
The worst part of camping with babies is traipsing around a tent in the middle of the night in your long johns looking for clean nappies, wipes or bottles. Try to keep the tent tidy and these essential items close to hand. Glow sticks make good night lights for toddlers and will give you enough light to change them by without startling them. Head torches are not just for pot-holers: a small head torch means you can keep both hands free if you need to change or rock an infant back to sleep again.

2. Eating
Breast milk is by far the most convenient food for a baby on holiday. There are no storage or hygiene issues to take care of.
Cleaning bottles and keeping enough milk is particularly troublesome at festivals; when I went to Glastonbury, I planned ahead and breastfed my youngest daughter, only knocking it on the head (breastfeeding not the baby) when I returned.

One top tip is to freeze the milk before you leave and then put it in a coolbag. The frozen bottles act as ice packs, keeping your other provisions cool.
At other times, I have nagged stall-holders for hot water to wash baby bottles with, and Math has even bought a glass of milk from them when required. For older, weaned babies make sure you arrive at camp with a couple of meals already prepped. Give them something to munch on while you pitch camp. They have no patience when it comes to their bellies, and will not wait while you struggle with the tent, so it’s up to you to have foresight.

3. Weather
It will rain and your baby will want to crawl out of the tent to play in the puddles; waterproof suits (Muddy Puddles and Bush Baby make these) and waterproof booties (Bush Baby, Togz and Barts all make these) are good protection. If it is sunny the usual sun-cream, hats, full body coverage applies. Wellies for everyone.

4. Playing
Babies love the outdoors: they love the sounds of birdies singing, moo cows mooing and the wind blowing through the trees. They are quite interested in sticks they find on the ground and they like pulling grass up in their chubby little hands. Let them; dirt and the fresh air is why you took them camping.

5. Pitching
It’s hard to pitch a tent and look after the baby at the same time, especially if your tent requires two pairs of hands to erect. Arriving late at night is always pretty tough. Try your utmost to get there in daylight hours. Do a dry run and practise pitching any new tents before you travel, even if it means pitching it in the local park.

More >>> 6-10 Tips for Camping with Kids

The last year has been largely spent researching and preparing a proposal for the book, which I am currently deep in the throes of writing. The book will include American characters such as Ernest Thompson Seton, Nessmuk and Horace Kephart alongside the eccentric, progressive British camping movements of The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift and The Order of Woodcraft Chivalry. Thomas Hiram Holding will stand beside Edward Whymper, American Indian beside Romany Gypsy, Buckminster Fuller beside Stewart Brand, on a campsite where Glastonbury, Woodstock, neolithic hunters, and the Boston Methodist camp meetings of the nineteenth century are all taking place simultaneously.

So, I’ve got my work cut out. Wish me luck

Matthew De Abaitua

Cath is also contributing to the book. She is currently setting down her thoughts on taking babies camping; the first woman to join the Camping Club, Mrs F. Horsefield, took her boys of twelve years and her baby of twelve months camping, and we have just returned from the festival where there was a baby of about a month old.  It can be done.

Totem Pole at Abbey Farm campsite in the Cotswolds

As satisfying as well chosen gear is, objects and consumption are not the point of camping; while a newspaper is not the right place to admit to feelings of mysticism in the night woods, I will give full vent to camping mysticism at my forthcoming event at Port Eliot Festival, We Are Camping.

The campsite is at the end of a winding woodland path, necessitating a twenty minute trek pushing your kit in a wheelbarrow. I have no wheelbarrow skills, never having worked on a building site, and it was only last weekend when I barrowed my kit across the entire length of Glastonbury that I discovered the trick of tying all your gear together and then securing the heaped bundle to the barrow with an X of rope. So I made more of a meal of this task at Dernwood than was necessary.

The allure of wild camping is freedom. Freedom to have a campfire, freedom to arrange your camp as you see fit. And there is plenty of freedom at Dernwood. Our party consisted of a dozen adults and a dozen children, so the pitch-where-you-like system meant we could circle our wagons as we pleased.

My campfire skills are basic. I set bricks around a shallow fire pit, and sparked up the logs. The job of building and maintaining this fire was quickly taken up by two more experienced firebugs, and soon they were prepping wood, and erecting an ad-hoc cooking tripod from cast-iron lantern stands. The sight of iron and fire made my heart leap, and the boys crowded around the men, fascinated by this primal display.

Wild camping demands responsibility, especially when it comes to waste. At Dernwood Farm, I barrowed everyone’s rubbish back to the recycling bins at the entrance. When you spend the best part of an hour “putting the bins out” you are confronted with the fact of your own consumption. All that thoughtlessly acquired packaging at the supermarket comes back to haunt you. Most wild camping sites make no provision for rubbish. You are expected to take it away with you, and this is something to consider when you are loading up.

The facilities at Dernwood Farm stretch to a single WC toilet and water pipe. Check in at the farm on your way in to pay for your pitch and firewood. They also have freezers of their meat for sale.

At sunset, Cloud Farm staged a spectacular display of Gavs: a low mauve cloudscape gathered underneath a spectrum of purples enlivened with a streak of red

Of all the places we camped that rainy August, Cloud Farm was my favourite, and I will return. Like all good sites, you are encouraged to park away from the tents, only driving down to pitch or pack up. There was a good shop stocked with real ale and a cafe that the locals spoke warmly about. We wandered down to a pair of small fields and pitched beside a river, which was fenced off from our inquiring toddlers. Snug between the flanks of the valley, I set a fire. The last time I saw Tom, he demonstrated his device for checking the moisture level in logs; the Cloud Farm shop sold some wickedly dry wood, and soon I was roasting marshmellows over its uninhibited dancing flames.
I spent most of my twenties working and writing for The Idler. As Deputy Editor, I was part of a trio consisting of Tom, myself and art director and co-founder, Gavin Pretor-Pinney.

Gavin Pretor-Pinney, Matthew De Abaitua and Tom Hodgkinson of The Idler

Situated in Clerkenwell in the 1990s and the fun bit of the new millennium, we took full advantage of the city. Since those happy carefree days, each of us has sought out an individual vision of the English pastoral: while I beaver away on a book about camping, Tom’s bestseller How To Be Free posits a way of life that draws on medievalism and rural self-sufficiency; Gavin has enjoyed such international success with his Cloudspotting books that I can no longer gaze up at the clouds without thinking of him. My daughter even calls clouds “Gavs”.

At sunset, Cloud Farm staged a spectacular display of Gavs: a low mauve cloudscape gathered underneath a spectrum of purples enlivened with a streak of red. Purple is the colour of inbetween, the veil between reality and imagination, day and night. For a moment, I was transported out of my immediate responsibilities, that carousel of Dad Tasks, and experienced a sense of well-being that lasted until the sun went down; the silent knowing wisdom of idleness about which we had spent our hectic twenties extolling, but rarely experiencing.

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