Jonathan is deeply relieved when Annabel suggests they forgo their customary family holiday in Italy for a week’s camping in Wales. With two sets of school fees for them to worry about, fancy foreign holidays are increasingly looking like a thing of the past. And besides, he has fond memories of childhood camping in Scotland: waking up with the dawn, cooking on a campfire and bathing in a loch.
Simple pleasures, that’s what he’s thinking as he braces himself for a week without a decent night’s sleep or a bath. So Jonathan is first surprised, and then a little shocked, when Annabel tells him she has booked the family into a luxury teepee, complete with Indian day beds, Egyptian cotton sheets and scented candles. Whatever happened to good old rustling nylon sleeping bags and a charcoaled sausage?
In the past three years, glamorous camping, or “glampingâ€, has evolved as the most aspirational of family holidays. Put camping+luxury in a Google search and you realise five-star comfort, including pocket-sprung mattresses, power showers and champagne breakfasts in bed, are essential to the glamping experience. Lowly nylon tents don’t even get a look in: luxury safari-tent in Kent, anyone?
But the camping tide is turning and glamping is starting to look like a frivolous luxury. Over the past decade, our insatiable desire to consume has meant that everything, even sleeping in a field, was turned into a retail event. But leaner financial times mean that we’re all having to cut back. Combine this with the fact that flying to the Continent for a family holiday is now as environmentally and socially unacceptable as driving a Chelsea Tractor and traditional camping (“trampingâ€, perhaps?) close to home starts looking like a financially savvy decision that increases your green credentials.
“Camping is about being in a field or on a beach, usually in this country, with your family and friends. While we love a bit of glamour, spending hundreds of pounds on it definitely diminishes the appeal,†says Tess Carr, co-author, with her camping buddy Kat Heyes, of The Happy Campers.
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