Tent in a hail storm

This August we’ve been invited to go camping with the in-laws. I’ve said yes to this, but with the assurance of either a heated tipi or a heated campervan on offer. Throughout my twenties, I camped constantly. I camped at festivals, on road trips, on beaches, in the garden, with family, with various boyfriends, in an olive grove in Spain, up a mountain in Colorado. Then the children came, and I thought, why not? This could be fun. I was wrong. Camping with a baby is not fun.

When Mole was nine months old, we attempted Latitude Festival, having been once already in the pre-baby days and loved it. We booked a pitch in the family section, and appreciated the fact that Latitude was well equipped for children, there was a whole children’s area, even a nappy changing tent with baby baths on offer. But it still didn’t escape the fact that music festivals and babies do not mix. Mole’s bedtime routine was paramount to the difference between a contented baby and a screaming nightmare baby. Her bedtime was at seven pm, precisely when all the good bands start appearing on stage. We observed other parents putting their slightly older toddlers to bed in these ‘wagon carts’, all decorated with fairy lights and looking amazing, then wheeling them around the festival until midnight while they slept soundly amid the din of the party. While we did not have a wagon cart, we attempted the same idea with Mole in the buggy. She was not having any of it. The defining moment of the festival was me pushing Mole around an oak tree twenty times in a vain attempt to get her to sleep, while missing my favourite band Haim, who were a big part of the reason we had come to the festival in the first place.

But the real clincher came with a road trip holiday last year. It was April and I was eight months pregnant with Hedgehog, so naturally we thought it would be a good idea to go camping. It had something to do with the urge to get a last minute holiday in before bump arrived, and with escaping the house while the landlords did some building work in our living room.

We had relatives in the toe end of Cornwall, so our plan was to stay with them for a week, and break the journeys there and back with stop overs in Somerset and Devon. Our first night is cold, but our sleeping bag is warm. Mole is in her pop up cot, zipped up in her reinforced sleeping bag, but keeps waking every half hour, until I bring her into the sleeping bag with us, which makes a tight squeeze, but she settles.

The following night, Mole sleeps soundly in her pop up cot all night, having apparently got used to life under canvas. Mummy and daddy don’t get so much sleep, on account of wrestling with a freak hail storm for most of the night. The guy ropes are pulled out of the ground, the poles break, and the entire tent collapses. We give up at four am and crawl back into the cave, with part of the tent still standing up in one corner. At six am the tent ceiling drops down to our faces, which is when we decide it’s time to get up. We crawl out of the carnage, get breakfast in the campsite café and pack the deceased tent into a skip.

Mole enjoys climbing around inside the car and playing with the satnav while we work out what to do next. After a frantic ring round of family, it turns out that a distant uncle lives about ten miles away near Taunton, and would be happy to put us up. Thus begins a fortnight of touring distant relations who live in the West Country, which is a lot of fun and is much more comfortable that living under canvas anyway.

The uncle near Taunton lives in a fabulous Vicarage with a huge garden and a shaggy dog, which Mole adores and follows around all day long. This is an adventure and she is having the time of her life. He takes us for a walk up on the Mendip hills, with wild ponies and fantastic views all around. I soak in an opulent roll top bath. We have conversations about his grown up children who are scientists and his work developing 4G for Motorola in the evenings by the fire.

The following day we go on to our relatives in the toe of Cornwall and spend a gorgeous week exploring beaches and stone circles, taking walks through woodland with Mole in the sling, and talking late into the evening in their stone cottage, next to another blazing fire.

On our way back we stay with another uncle in Devon, who takes an instant love to Mole, who in turn takes an instant love to the dog, Vixie. Mole and Vixie run frantic circles round the house together, it is unclear who is chasing who. My uncle talks about earlier life during the war, about his mischievous playing with my grandfather as a boy, about crossing the Atlantic in a sail boat and picking up thirty seven peas from the floor during a storm, about his late wife and her vendetta against dandilions, about his sons and how they are all completely different, and took us for a walk to the river Dart, and onto an island which the river runs around.

At length we came home, reluctant to leave this part of the country and its people. On our return, the entire house is covered in dust, the painters are still in the house painting, and the cleaner has left our bedroom window wide open, which according to the neighbours was slamming around all of the previous night in a storm. My anger rises. We take a drink in the pub to calm down, reflect on how fantastic family is in times of crisis, and that in a day the dust will be gone, the house will be shiny and repainted, and I can finish my nesting before Hedgehog arrives.

Lesson learned: when young children and nappies are involved, bricks and mortar is better than canvas. So this August, we can stretch out in the tipi (it had better be a strong one), or cosy up in the campervan. But whatever happens, we’ve negotiated Mole and Hedgehog into the motorhome with the in-laws. We thought they might like the full experience of camping with little people through the night.