Our second visit to Dernwood Farm in the heart of the Sussex Weald offered a completely different perspective to this wild campsite from our first; at the Lovewood festival we pitched beneath a pylon at the wrong end of the field. On our return, we pitched at the entrance of a glade, a patch...
Read More »
At Whitsun, the great meeting of all the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift took place. Named the Al-Thing, it was a group camp of 60 to 70 men and women and their children in over a hundred tents, arranged in a semi-circle on a large flat common bordered by a wood.
Read More »
They were the most intriguing and inspiring of English reform movements, an elite cell a few hundred strong, already nine years into their existence come the occasion of the dedication to the Long Man of Wilmington: they were the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift and they loved camping.
Read More »
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...
Read More »
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....
Read More »
Laughing my head off around the campfire
It had been years since I laughed so hard. There were four of us around a campfire set on a hill overlooking Glastonbury festival. It was Saturday night and the vale was a constellation echoing with music, a party that our small children precluded us from attending.
Read More »