Quote ="JerryChicken"You've not done "basic" camping until you've camped in a farmers field in a tent with no ground sheet (so you sleep on the grass) that isn't waterproof so that you awaken in a thunderstorm at 3am and realise that the canvas above your head may as well not be there and the water running off the hillside is now threatening to wash you out of the tent door.
Thats basic camping - Skelwith Bridge, May 1977, no toilet facilities, only fresh water from the stream off the hillsides, most fooking miserable weekend of my life.
PS - you also can't sleep in the back of a Ford Escort van when the rain is hammering off the roof.'"
That sounds luxury. Once went for a weekend to the coast with a mate. He'd found an old tent in his parents attic. We arrived and put the tent bag in some bushes in the middle of a roundabout. After several hours drinking we arrived back in the early hours to put the tent up. There we NO tent poles, just the tent (no grounsheet) and the guy ropes at each end. As you can imagine after about 10 pints I was not best pleased. I hit the roof with him. So his big idea was to tie the guy ropes to tree branches so we'd at least have a flat, vertical tent as it were and we could widen it out by getting under it. Problem was the ropes weren't quiet long enough. So I got more angry. He then took his shoe laces out and tied them to the end of the guy ropes and just managed to reach the extreme end of a brach (ie very little support). But that was the best we could do in the dark in the early hours, whilst ed. Problem was there was only one place were the trees were close enough to pitch (sorry, hang) the tent and when we got in the ground were we had to sleep was nowhere near level - it had at least an 8 inch mound. Not the most comfortable night. Luckily it was warm as we had no sleeping bags. We surprised a few locals on the Sunday morning as we appeared from the roundabout while they were washing their cars.
Mind you, there was an even worse occasion with the same bloke and his madcap weekend trips....
We camp with all the home comforts but we're still in a tent in the middle of a field so we're still camping!
