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Ah camping, how I love and loathe you in equal measures.
OPINION: If you went to sleep last night thinking, “You know, what these sheets could really use is a generous sprinkling of grit,” well, have I got a suggestion for you!
We’ve done two family camping trips these school holidays. Wonderful, memory-making stuff, and simultaneously terrible for neck alignment and sensible dietary choices.
We do these trips with other families, which is marvellous for several reasons.
The children entertain each other reasonably well, and if you forget to bring something (towels, coffee… hypothetically, of course), chances are someone else has got extras you can borrow or brew.
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Also, every family inevitably brings enough food for the entire group – the maths is skewy, but in a wonderful way, because it means that even though the living conditions are rudimentary, the snack quality is peaking.
There are trade-offs though.
Bed time? Forget about it. If there’s still any glimmer of daylight, the tent may as well be made of glass.
You’ve also probably thrown salty snacks at the kids all day, and then topped them up with oozing fireside marshmallows, and now they’re riding a sugar high all the way through the mood swings of mild dehydration.
Sleep is a lovely goal. Aim for it when you’re back at home.
There was a time where I could sleep on any surface, as long as it was horizontal. Tree roots or cluttered lounge floors posed no real inconvenience.
It’s one of those superpowers that I didn’t really appreciate until I hit 40 and realised that it was gone forever.
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Camping in the Abel Tasman on paper sounds idyllic. Until you wake up in the morning and feel like you’ve literally slept on nothing but paper.
After one ghastly night’s sleep on a beachfront campsite in the Abel Tasman, I grilled all our camping buddies about the comfort levels, durability and price of their sleeping mats, because honestly, if it wasn’t such an environmental no-no, I might have thrown my feeble foam mats into the campfire.
I always imagined sand would be a soft, welcoming mattress. That is a trick that nature plays.
On the balance, it’s worth it.
Bedtime can be happily deferred while chatting with friends around the soft light of a fading solar lantern, accompanied by slightly warm wine and the fancy cheeses that are starting to sweat in the waning chilly bins.
And even if it’s a wakeful night, the ocean’s melodious ebb ensures that it’s not too much of a hardship.
We’re a few years into this camping malarky though, and I feel like we’ve done our time and can now justifiably upgrade our sleeping arrangements to something a little more ergonomic.
The children, meanwhile, have several decades ahead of them where they can sleep soundly across a jagged foundation of driftwood and discarded tent pegs.
Next year I will be gladly donating my foam placebos to their stack.
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Camping is about making memories – for yourself, your family and most importantly, your kids.
