It’s official. John and I are the world’s worst campers!! It’s taken us to ages 68 and 57 to finally realise this, but we have had many laughs and cries along the way!

I decided to go into print with this after our latest foray into the wild! I’m sure this story won’t make you laugh as much as we did, but if you know us, just imagine it and I hope it will bring a smile!

We have a lovely VW camper van (which is up for sale if you’re interested! It’s only 4 years old so I warn you now, we’re not selling it for just a few grand, but get in touch if you’re interested) So, we decided that for this year, we would try again to do our main holiday camping even though we’d already had the conversation that camping isn’t a main holiday thing for us! More on that later.

First couple of days was glorious, weather was terrific, cooked outside on our new little gas bbq (the second one we’ve bought because we sold the last one when we quit camping! Haha!) Walking to the loos, walking to do the dishes, walking to empty our toilet (John’s job!) getting the steps in – all rosy! We only had 6 nights booked on this site so on day 5, we began to look where we’d go next…we looked at loads online, shall we go to North Wales or stay West. What’s the weather going to be like? We open the weather app and it’s going to be grim. John is the first one to voice the idea, (I’d already thought it) ‘we could go to a lovely ‘air bnb’ in Ogmore-by-Sea AKA, our house! Our own lovely bed in the most gorgeous spot! It didn’t take us long to start packing up! We’ve got it down to a fine art except for the toilet tent! This was a new acquisition, so we didn’t have to walk to the toilet block during the day– great! It came out of its bag very easily, as tents always do, but when we came to get it back in well, here is where the laughter started. It took two of us wrestling with this thing to get it back in its bag. We twisted it down to as small as we could, forcing the zip, there was no way it was going in so we started again, got it a little bit smaller and as we were forcing it into the bag for the 4^th time, it just pinged back fully open and out of the bag, I could not stop laughing, John said, ‘we’re more cruisers than campers you and me!’ And then he picked up the toilet tent and took it to the bins! It was only £7 so not a great loss!

We first went camping when the kids were small as most families do. Cheap and cheerful. I have so many stories I could tell but they would take too long, so I will give you a snapshot.

Easter – around 25 years ago. Good Friday was a beautiful sunny day and so we set off with our tent to Brecon– We had a lovely day! But, by nightfall, it was absolutely freezing!! We told the kids ‘We’re leaving’ Problem, we didn’t have enough petrol in the car, nowhere was open, we ended up knocking on the door of a hotel like Mary and Joseph, thankfully they took us in, the owner gave us all hot chocolate because she felt so sorry for us!  

Summer – again probably around 25 years ago. Swansea, scorching sun, sat having a BBQ thinking this is the life. During the night, the heavens opened, tent leaked. We folded it up and chucked it straight in the bin!

November 2025 – By now, we had our VW and we took off for a holiday. The first day we woke up, I looked at John and started to cry. ‘This is not a holiday; I am not a camper’ we moved to a hotel!

We’ve thrown numerous tents away, sold all our gear only to buy it all again, but I am happy to say that after last week, we have firmly decided that camping is not for us!

We quit! We’re done!

If you love camping, God bless you and may you have many wonderful nights under canvas or caravan.

As for me and my household, P & O, here we come.