Is this how it really is? UKCampsite.co.uk Camping under canvas Forum Messages

Why, oh why did I agree to it?
"Come on, Uncle Spud, you’ll love it. We’re in this great campsite on a cliff overlooking the sea on the Isle of Wight. The views are terrific, and it’s a great place to unwind."
Before I could say that I couldn’t come because I was washing my hair this weekend, I found that I had agreed.
So, there I was, with a cheap supermarket tent that I had picked up in a moment of madness thinking, “That’s only £10, it may come in useful one day”. Sure, I put it up, and those things on the guy ropes wouldn’t stay taught, and their was no flysheet either. “Never mind, I reckon 14 stone of Grumpy Old Man should keep it fairly well anchored to the ground”, I thought. The instructions said, “24 square feet of camping luxury”. By the time I had my erection sorted (I bet you wondered when I was going to make that reference!), I discovered that ‘24sq ft’ only works out at 6ft long by 4ft wide, and I ended up with my head touching wet canvas at one end, and my feet touching wet canvas at the other. My 'bed' was a piece of rolled up foam which was precisely 12mm thick. That is not a bed. A bed has pocket springs with no roll-together. This was like sleeping on plywood.
Camping, what a total shower! I found myself perched at the top of a cliff in a howling gale while the wettest August in Chrisendom decided it make landfall precisely at our location.
Now, let me tell you how camp sites ‘happen’. You need one hard-up farmer who reckons that he can make money out of renting out small bits of his field to people he really wouldn’t like if he met them in the pub, while providing them with as few facilites as possible. Have you ever wondered how farmers get to drive huge Japanese 4x4s?
The owner of this particular campsite, I decided, was to be called Mr Fiddler, whose grandfather featured in Carry On Camping. “Well, you never said anything about wanting to have a BBQ – I don’t allow them on the grass, but I can rent you some bricks to keep it off the grass – that will be and extra £1 please”. Because I arrived at 8pm, Mr Fiddler had already shut up shop in his other racket (aka, the camp shop), and was probably busy counting his pound notes somewhere; so I simply pitched my ‘luxurious camping solution’, and decided to settle up with him in the morning.
Effing THIRTY-SIX quid for two nights! You have got to be joking me! The tight wadded, straw-sucking, cow-pat hurling barsteward. I could have stayed in a hotel for that! But it was too late, my nieces would have been disappointed. The last time I went camping, it was 250 Drachma a night.
Well, I thought, at least they have showers. Well, they did. Ten of them. Of course, only 1 of them actually had hot water coming through it, and the rest were in various forms of disrepair. So I had a bracing cold shower.
And then, what campers do, is have a family get together which involves a drink or two (helps keep out the cold), while ‘enjoying a BBQ’ (bricks £1 extra). With a horizontal wind, nobody gets to have good time. It was like trying to eat in a chimney, apart from the the people in the tent nearest to the cliff, where it was like trying to eat in a hurricane.
And then it went dark.
Some lucky so-and-sos had lights so they could continue drinking. But the thing about camp sites is that everyone has to go to bed at pretty much the same time, and in this case, it was 9pm. FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, I haven’t been to bed at 9pm since I was 11 years old, unless I was getting my leg over. However, on a camp site, nobody has doors, OR walls. Its like sharing your bedroom with 150 people, but without the orgy. There’s kids crying, fat barstewards snoring, and some inconsiderate bu&&er slamming, opening and re-slamming their car door about 3ft away from your ear (hearing a car door slam, or a diesel engine start ABOVE the level of your head while you are doing a very good impersonation of a polyester slug pegged to the ground, is VERY disconcerting).
Well, I’m home now, and having to wash every last bit of clothing and bedding that I took as its all soaking wet. Mr Fiddler can go hang, cos that’s the last time I ever go camping.

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