At first, camping on Brownsea Island seems dreamy and idyllic – your very own island, free of tourists for the evening, and more astonishingly, free of Scout camps! But then you realise there’s an infestation of hornets within the campsite and then thunder rumbles over and you realise you’re on an island a mile and a half long and it’s made out of tinder! Also, while the tree tent is certainly more comfortable than sleeping on the floor, you spend all night hauling your mat back into place and when you climb out in the morning, your whole world continues to bounce gently for the rest of the day, like you haven’t managed to get your sea legs.
I camped here twice in quick succession in 2021 when we were allowed out if we didn’t go too far and Scout camps weren’t back on yet. Two beautiful weekends, boiling hot by day, surprisingly freezing by night. I don’t remember ever being scared. Tourists came on one of three boats during the mid-morning and departed strictly three hours later. The island hadn’t been so peaceful since Mrs Bonham-Christie locked its metaphorical doors in 1927. And there were no flying nail guns and no storms.
Am I complaining about a generally rather pleasant weekend on an island? Yeah, I am. I like bees and I can tolerate wasps as long as they’re not in the same room as me or attempting to steal my picnic but hornets – hornets are an abomination. I’ll accept that maybe there are proper food chain/cycle of nature reasons for them to exist but I’d like them to please exist on the other side of the planet from me. And I’m not terrified of storms unless I’m camping in a tree on an island with no real storm shelter. I think those are reasonable things to be scared of. But otherwise…
Brownsea Island is dreamy and idyllic! Even now the tourists are back, there are plenty of places where you won’t encounter more than a handful of them over the course of the day. I certainly never felt overrun by them. I spent Friday and Saturday evenings on the beach at the west end of the island, watching the sun set over Hamworthy and Arne (ok, this was disturbed by people with cabin cruisers playing tuneless music less than 100m offshore – what is the point of coming to a perfect beautiful undisturbed bit of paradise if you are yourself going to be such a disturbance?). I’ve seen a few sunsets. I’m not someone who actively seeks out beautiful west-facing spots usually, I tend to just let the sun rise and set without bothering it, but I like to watch it on Brownsea. Friday’s sunset was pretty but amateur that I am, I wasn’t expecting the world to turn spectacular neon shades of pink and orange immediately afterwards. Oh, that was absolutely worth sitting on a beach getting chilly for two hours!
On Saturday, I worked on my Beavers Explore activity badge. Beavers are the 6-8 age section of the Scouts and because Brownsea Island is where Scouting (and subsequently Guiding) began, they’ve partnered with the Scouts to do some badges. There’s the Beavers Explore one and there’s also a Squirrels badge. Squirrels are a new section, I think they’re the 4-6s. Ideally, I would have liked to have stumbled across a leaflet for a Scout or even Explorer badge, which is a better age category for an adult but given the choice between 4-6 and 6-8, I went with the 6-8s. The idea is to complete the activities in the leaflet and then you can go to the Trading Post, the little volunteer shop on the campsite, and collect your badge. I didn’t manage this. I didn’t get back early enough on Saturday and I didn’t stay long enough on Sunday morning, so that’s a job either for the next time I’m on Brownsea or the next time I do archery at a certain Scout camp with a shop.
You’re supposed to walk a circuit of the island looking out for minibeasts on the heath, trees in the woodland area, explore various activities on the shore and make a self-portrait using natural materials somewhere in the woods. Now, I never found a beetle, ladybird or caterpillar on the heath and I didn’t paddle – I guess I never got to a proper sandy bit when the tide was cooperative but at least I’ve got that to finish next time. It’s a good thing to do while you’re walking around Brownsea. The joy of Brownsea is in the nature and the peace and so to have a guide while you explore that forces your eye into the trees and the sand and the grass is a great thing. I’ve certainly never paid so much attention to how many different kinds of trees there are on this island – and I’ve been over on conservation projects where the job is to chop down trees!
But mostly I just enjoyed sitting in my tent, with the cover clipped back and the inner rolled up, bouncing slightly, watching the sea between the trees down at the bottom of the campsite, reading a book or eating or just existing. My summers – by which I mean the school summer terms – are very busy, what with various Guiding things and boating and trying to fit in both twice-weekly mile swims in the outdoor pool and the occasional sea swim so it’s nice to have a weekend where I can just walk around looking at trees and sunsets and reading and not have to think about anything going on back in the real world.
Of course, that works better if you’re not terrified that you’re about to be set on fire by that storm or murdered by a hornet but give or take those minor risks to life and limb, I don’t think there’s anywhere better to relax than on your own private island.
