Britain Goes Camping is a new BBC documentary from Brian Henry Martin and Doubleband Films, showing Tue 20 July at 9pm. Earlier this year, Cath and myself spent a day filming with Brian and his small crew, and some of that interview footage is included in the programme
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Continuing Cath's tips for camping with kids and babies, including advice on illness, nappies, campsites and how to lug the little sods around
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Bees are eunuchs in Nature’s harem. Or dutiful office workers in Nature’s office; fat and furry bachelors tormented by their more glamourous and sensual colleagues, the flowers.
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Tom’s Field is a popular campsite on the Southern end of the Isle of Purbeck, which is not really an island so much as a hearty peninsula situated on a turn-off from the holiday traffic crawling West through Dorset. Like so many of the Cool Camping selections, Tom’s Field struggles to maintain its allure...
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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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My rucksack contained three beds, two sleeping bags, a small ration of underwear, a shirt, a pair of shorts, Birkenstocks sandals, a stove, methlylated spirits, some of the shoe overflow from Cath’s rucksack, an Opinel knife, two torches, a rubber mallet, a notebook, a bottle of Talisker single malt, a pair of speakers, an...
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Camping with children but without a car: maximum effort, minimum capacity for shame.
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Cath and I used to go camping without a car. The absolute minimum gear while still packing a kid. I wrote this for The Guardian on the subject. Now I can drive. But I’ll never forget heaving all that kit around the public transport system.
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The No Toddler
We camped in a windy field in the Cotswolds, around the back of the organic farm of Abbey Home Farm, near Cirencester. There was an outbreak of No from the toddler.
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