Part of the reason I went to Wimbleball was the SWE event Wet & Wild which I talked about in the last blog post but part of the reason was Rebel Badges. I’ve talked about this so many times that I’m not even going to link the previous posts except to say have a look at my challenge badges category.
I thought this camp would be very useful for fulfilling all the requirements of my Camper badge. As a Guide, I never did the Camper badge. We were always on holiday at the same time as Guide camp. In fact, I didn’t really do much camping until I was an adult. Anyway, this badge represents not only my fourth Wild badge (4/5 of the way to my Wild theme patch!) but also all these years of not getting my Camp badge as a teenager. Most of the requirements were standard camp stuff – dealing with the tent and the kit and the first aid etc but a few of them needed a little attention. It had to be at least three consecutive nights so I went Thursday instead of the Friday I’d normally go on. The fact that it was the Jubilee weekend was an accident. I booked it back in November and I was trying to find a weekend that was near the SWE event but definitely not the same one and this is where I landed. I don’t know if the extra bank holiday had been announced but I’m pretty sure I didn’t know about it and that I got it free from work was entirely a coincidence.
Next, I had to take part in three outdoor activities. Well, that was fine. My watersports would cover that. The other one that would require planning was that I needed to cook four meals outdoors. My unique eating habits and my camping style mean I don’t do a lot of cooking and four meals would take some thinking about. My original plan included François’s Cinnamon Porridge even though I tried it at home and hated it – too mushy – and campfire fondue.
The first thing I discovered was that there’s no phone signal at the campsite. I arrived an hour and a half before check-in but I knew I had my pitch number on my confirmation email and if it was empty, there was no reason why I shouldn’t set up and check in later. No signal! There’s wifi but it only extends about ten metres beyond reception, which is a small hut housing the toilets, showers and washing-up sinks. Effectively, I was about to have an unexpected weekend off-grid. Of course, I could bring my phone up to reception, and I did, but I kept it to a minimum because I had no way of charging the phone except my portable charger, which I knew would struggle to last the entire weekend.
I took my big four-man tent and I also took my tarp. Initially, I didn’t think there was space for it – these pitches were nowhere near as spacious as they’d been in Purbeck two weeks earlier and a lot more formal than on most campsites. Mine was number thirteen, between posts 13 and 14 and leaving space for cars between my pitch and the ones opposite. And the ground was stony. Half an inch of soil and then solid rock and I didn’t have any rock pegs. In the end, the tent had to be right up against my car because I just couldn’t get the pegs in any further over. That left about three feet on the other side. Not enough for the tarp. On comparison to my neighbours’ six-man, I discovered that I had room to rig the thing up at the front without impeding traffic too much.
It’s… well, it’s difficult to put up a tarp of that kind single-handed. I don’t know a lot about tarps. This one is purpose-made by Eurohike, which I know isn’t the “correct” way to have a tarp. The thing doesn’t stand up unaided until at least all six of its ropes are pegged down and you can’t hold the poles up while you bang everything in when you’re on your own. I got it up eventually and with two of the ropes tied to my tent rather than making a roadblock to the ground directly outside the door. Half an hour later, it collapsed in a breeze. I got the spare guylines out of my spares/repairs/emergencies bag and put three guylines on each pole and that stayed up. Unfortunately, in its collapse, it lightly and gently tore a slit in the fabric so the spares bag came out again and I fixed it with my roll of tent repair tape.
It had also already been out for the back. I couldn’t get a peg in the ground to hold the back wall of the tent down. I had been able to get the rear guys in but there was no non-stony patch closer to the tent. Did I let the entire back of the tent flap? No! I got a piece of rope, tied it to one peg, threaded it up to the loop at the back of the tent and then back to the other peg. It’s not how it’s meant to be done and it’s not holding the tent as closely to the ground as I’d like but it was a solution of sorts.
Then the inside. I have a two-shelf cupboard and a kitchen unit and I unpacked everything into those in the huge porch. All my bags – the repairs/spares/emergency bag, the empty kitchen bag, the plate bag, all the other bags, they went in one of those big wobbly buckets on the other side of the porch and I laid out my bed and my clothes in the sleeping compartment. Lantern hung up overhead because you don’t want to be scrabbling around for it in the dark, Crocs on, chair unfolded and sit outside in the blazing sun, in the shelter of your tarp. Lovely.
I cooked pasta on my stove that night. Nice and easy and obvious. It’s a small stove and a small pot so it was a small serving but that suited me fine. And then it got cold. I hadn’t taken a coat because it’s June and it was hot and why would I take a coat? So before it was dark, I was huddled in my bed, shivering, and failing to read a book because the only way that’s comfortable is to lie on my back and hold the book directly above my head, which makes my arms ache. I missed the only clear night I could have stargazed in Exmoor’s Dark Sky area and I even missed the little solar lights I’d placed outside my tent. Yes, when you’ve stuck solar lights outside your tent, you’ve joined the ranks of the big boys of camping.
In the morning, I started my second cooked meal – toast on the folding toaster. Unfortunately, the gas ran out when one side was just starting to crisp. There’s nowhere handy to get a replacement, especially on a bank holiday. Sure, I should have been prepared but it didn’t sound nearly-empty. Quite frankly, it still doesn’t. It still feels like there’s a quarter of a can of gas in there when I shake it. So I had to get out the crackers for breakfast. Then I spent the morning loitering on the campsite until it was time for my windsurfing lesson. Ran into one of the wardens and requested a firepit – the pair of them tried to help with locations for gas replacement but I knew I could live off cold food if it wasn’t for the badge, and I knew I fancied hiring a firepit. It was waiting for me when I got back from my lesson so once I’d changed and tried to find somewhere to hang all my wet stuff (I need a proper washing line – my little folding one can support a t-shirt and a tea towel but not a wetsuit), I started getting the firepit lit.
I’m not a natural firelighter but with the help of two lumps of paraffin wax and some small pieces of wood and my attempts to leave it alone for five minutes and don’t smother it, you idiot! I eventually got it going. Time for campfire pizza.
Now, I’d planned to have campfire pizza. That means pitta bread stuffed with your pizza toppings, wrapped in foil and cooked on the fire. I’d brought the ingredients and I hired the firepit. I hadn’t thought about the practicalities of cooking. There’s no grill and I hadn’t brought one. I hadn’t brought tools. This particular firepit is a deep bucket on legs. You can’t drop it in among the embers because you can’t stick your hand in there to pull it out, especially your bare unprotected hand. I sat it on the rim of the bucket and turned it around and over lots of times until the foil was beginning to look a bit scorched. Oh, it was perfect! Now, I admit my pizza toppings were nothing but cheese. I made cheese on toast. But it was good cheese on toast! It was perfectly melted and the bread wasn’t burned and I immediately wished I’d put on two lots at once. I did make a second lot but the fire was lower by now and I’d left the first lot for ages while the fire really got going and started dying back and so I did have to resort to dropping this parcel in the embers and retrieving it using the campfire toaster, which is a metal disc with wire supports that fold down. But it wasn’t as good as the first one.
The wind howled that night. I woke up to find my tarp still standing, although two of the pegs had spun overnight and two guys had come free. Over on pitch 19, they’d rigged up a tarp by putting four uprights through a a flat sheet and tying the loose ends to the camper van and I was gratified to see two of their poles had collapsed. Mine hadn’t. I was equal parts surprised and smug about that. The tarp is so hard to get up on your own! So unstable! And yet, did you really think anything I’d rigged up was going to collapse in a big of wind? I storm set my tent, for goodness sake! Would have worked better with a set of storm pegs but I hadn’t realised I’d want any. They’re on my shopping list for next time, by the way.
Saturday was so windy that they’d cancelled all hire and all boating activities except kayaking. I’ve talked about that. I spent Saturday morning dreading it because it was cold and wet and windy and I didn’t fancy going out on the lake at all but it was quite good fun, except that I was restricted to such a small area. I’d also picked up my orienteering pack so in the afternoon, when the weather took a turn for the better, I ran around the site collecting my control points and then collecting wood.
Well, I had no more firelights and still no gas. If I was going to cook again, it had to be on the firepit and I needed something to get my logs going. In fact, it took a pile of ancient invoice paper I brought home from work in about 2014, after we changed the name of the building, and which has been in my car ever since, to get it going, plus a big pile of semi-dry cut grass to make it blaze and between them, that got my tiny twigs going and once the twigs were going, the small bits of kindling got going and then I could pop in my logs. Dinner on Saturday was a garlic flatbread, wrapped in foil and plopped on the rim of the fire, same as last night. Without the cheese, it didn’t look quite so melty and wonderful when I unwrapped it and I did have to put half of it back on to reheat but it was perfectly edible.
I wasn’t going to be lighting the fire for breakfast in the morning. I had my SUP lessons at 10am and I was supposed to check out by 11am so that meant I had to have my entire home packed away, vacate my pitch and be ready to go across to the activity centre by about 9.45am. Breakfast was the remains of the crackers eaten in my porch, because the cloud was low, heavy and drizzling. The tent went away wet (into an Ikea bag because I can’t even imagine getting it into its actual bag!), to be spread out in the garden in the sun on Monday and I decided that I’d count the toast as my first meal on the grounds that I tried and it wasn’t technically my fault the gas had run out and I’d done toast on my previous camping trip two weeks earlier. It’s not perfectly exactly how I’d like to complete the badge but I’m not denying myself completion because of undercooked toast.
I’d made myself a changing robe so I left my car on the hard standing opposite reception and after the paddleboarding, I changed there in the open air, had a drink and a snack and used the wifi to set my satnav for home. I smelled of sweat and lake and woodsmoke, I’d completed my Rebel Camper badge, I’d recreated a Region event and now I was going home to a nice long bath.