Suffolk in a tent

It was our first experience of camping as a family in the tent this month, and it went surprisingly well. Our last experience of camping was three years ago, when the tent blew down in a hail storm in the middle of the night, so it’s taken me this long to recover from the trauma and make another attempt.

At the time Mole was about 18 months old, I was about to pop with Hedgehog, and I thought a last minute break away in a tent would be a good idea. Mole slept through the entire storm in her sleeping bag, while her parents struggled with guy ropes and tent poles in the freezing blackness outside.

This time, we’ve got a brand new super duper tent, that is much more roomy, and I’ve made a proper list of the supplies we need, including disposable BBQ kits for Mr M&H and bunting for me, which is essential for that glamping look that we’re after.

After trawling online, I picked The Orchard Campsite near Wickham Market in Suffolk, about a two hour drive from us. It looked suitably groovy and hip, boasting not only a stream, but a small wood, open fires allowed and free glow sticks for the kids on Saturday nights, awesome.

We got lucky with the weather, which was scorching, so the main problem was how to keep cool. Luckily we pitched up right next to the stream, which was useful for paddling, and for keeping the milk cold.

On arrival it was pretty busy, half of Suffolk seemed to have decided to come, so my visions of a secluded ‘getting back to nature’ weekend were a bit squelched, but we still found a nice spot, and on the bright side there were plenty of children running round for Mole and Hedgehog to make friends with.

Unfortunately after about an hour of putting the tent up, we realised we had pitched next to the worst camping neighbours in the world. They were sitting in a large circle drinking beer, acting like they had just arrived for a rave weekend in Ibiza, being about as loud and obnoxious as it’s possible to be. They swore at their children, made offensive jokes, and were generally awful. I later noticed that all the other campers had positioned their tents way from Club Ibiza.

By then it was too late to move our tent, so having set up camp, we headed off to the beach for the day, mainly to shield Mole and Hedgehog’s ears from the vile language. Aldeburgh is 20 minutes away, and was also heaving with people, but we found a parking spot and spent the afternoon flying our kite on the beach (which Mole watched with steely obsession while holding a tight grip on the line), eating ice creams (Hedgehog got it all over her, I mean from head to toe, I don’t know how she did it), and snoozing.

By the time we got back, it was time to make BBQ squewers, which Mr M&H did bending over our single gas burner, chopping up vegetables and chicken pieces in the grass. Mole ran circles around the tent singing the Frozen song, while Hedgehog crashed out on her sleeping bag, overcome with all the excitement and sweaty from the sun.

We built our fire as the sun went down, and sat in an ever tighter circle around it as the cold night drew in. I was grateful for my poncho, which is an old blanket with a slit cut in it for my head, that I quickly realised was essential for being outside after dark. We didn’t bring a torch, so we went to bed pretty early as there wasn’t much else to do in the dark, but not before the glow sticks had been given out to the children from reception at the top of the hill.

Mole was enraptured with her glow sticks, she was probably more struck with them than she was with roasting the marshmallows, that she managed to burn her mouth on. I think this was probably the first time I’d attempted to teach Mole and Hedgehog ‘fire skills’, since we don’t usually get the chance. Mole was very keen on helping to make the fire, fetching the wood for me and stacking it according to my instructions. We sat round our fire in a hypnotised trance, the stars came out over our heads, and I felt strangely contented.

There followed a freezing night in our sleeping bags, with a couple of quick scampers around the back of the tent for night time loo stops. At six am I emerged for a final loo stop, to meet the orange dawn light, the chorus of the birds and a low lying mist that covered everything in a white blanket. It was silent and magical.

This day also turned out to be sweltering, so we opted to stay at the campsite and relax on a blanket in the shade, reading and swimming in the stream. Mr M&H took charge of the cooking, while I washed up, and got distracted playing ping pong with Mole in the games room. She was pretty good considering her nose only just reached the table top. The Ibiza crowd were mercifully silent. They all seemed to be hung over and were walking around nursing their stomachs, bliss.

That night, Mole was pining for her glow sticks, which had by now run out of juice. She caught sight of the family next to us (in the other direction) having a disco with their children under a gazebo, complete with glitter ball. So after spending about half an hour saying “I want that boy’s glow sticks” and asking us to come with her, Mr M&H took her by the hand and asked if she could join the party. Mole stood shyly on the threshold until a little girl took her hand and drew her under the gazebo, and that was the last we saw of her for three hours.

The following morning, Mole continued playing with her new friends, disappearing with them into the woods, while Hedgehog sat on our laps and fondled our ears in her cuddly way. The Ibiza crowd seemed to finally relax into the swing of things and had a game of cricket with their children that was fun to watch, before leaving in a convoy of cars.

We made our way back West slowly, stopping for lunch in Thetford Forest, driving in the hottest part of the day, and being relieved to get home finally to have a shower, and return to the bricks and mortar.

It’s whetted my appetite for more camping, which we’re about to do next week, so long as the weather holds out. My list of camping equipment is growing ever longer, until it occurred to me that part of the reason people go camping is to leave their material worlds behind and embrace the nomadic life, in a sort of primal desire to return to the wild. So I’m holding off on getting too much extra stuff for now, apart from the bunting, which is essential where ever you go.

In other news… worn out by an entire morning at the allotment, Hedgehog goes to sleep by the shed door in the mid-day heat. She refused to sleep in the play tent, even when I put some very comfy looking netting down for her. I positioned a wheelbarrow by her head to give some shade. Hedgehog will sleep anywhere.

Oh, and it turns out that our five young hens, who’ve happily been living at the allotment for nearly two months now, may in fact be four cockerels and a hen. One of them has started crowing in an adolescent ‘my voice is just breaking’ kind of way, and a couple more are sparring. So we’ll have to deal with that problem quite soon.

Our freezer may soon have a lot of chicken in it.