If you go down to the woods today…

Friday 6^th September 2013

…you may get a big surprise! I went camping.  Actually, that obnoxious phrase ‘glamping’.  It wasn’t glam.  It was good fun, it was an experience – but it was not glam. We stayed in a converted British Telecom canteen wagon, de-commissioned in the 1970s and then, about two years ago, moved to the small holding in Wales where it now lives.  She is Matilda.  Her owners have converted her into accommodation, complete with a large double bed which you make from boards and foam cushions; a 2-ring camping type oven; lots of nooks and crannies for storage and best of all:  a little wood-burner, flat but surprisingly long and powerful enough to keep you very cosy indeed. Outside, in the clearing in the woods where Matilda lives, is another fire pot, an outdoor gas burner and sink – and the ahem – facilities: gas shower and a compost loo. The place is very remote, making evening trips to the pub basically impossible.  So we went out all day, cycling (note:  Wales is not flat.  At all);  or walking in the hills but once we were back at Camp M, we stayed in.  We made the fires (this was my job because I am, as you know, obsessed with fire); collected wood for the fires; cooked the evening meal; drank some wine; listened to the battery radio or to music courtesy of my portable charged iPod speaker; read until it went too dark; lit the many tea-lights and went to bed at about 10 PM every night. It was magical, really.  Quite hard work, not restful physically, but in every other sense it really was a complete change. No electric plugs.  No gadgets or hair-dressing accessories.  No mobile ‘phone power away from the car, and also, no network coverage.  Bonus. What we did have was complete darkness, the silence of deep countryside, hundreds of trees around us – and free-range chickens now and then from the farm.  And scenes like this, moon-set over the camp: One night it rained.  Matilda is a tin can van so the rain and the attendant dripping from the surrounding trees, made an amazing, soothing rhythm on the roof.  In the night it must have stopped only to resume just after dawn.  So we just went back to sleep.  Like I said:  magical. On the day we left, I was up at 6 AM.  As it dawned about half an hour later, a solitary bat flew round and round the clearing in which we were camped.  Silent and tiny.  Round and round. I did some knitting: This is the (now felted) beaded needle case that goes with the new Bump Bag. This is William’s scarf: But once it got dusky, it was too dark to read or knit and anyway, I was exhausted by 9 o’clock. I have learned that I could camp – but I wouldn’t like it because the saving grace for me at Matilda was the wood burner inside.  The nice chap from whom we rented the van said: you probably won’t need to light it but if you do, here’s the wood burner.  We nodded.  The instant he was gone, we gathered twigs and sticks and got the fire going. I am not roughy-toughy. I wouldn’t miss dressing up or make up (utterly pointless here and also means you have to wash more often); or electricity or telly.  But I simply cannot stand being cold.  In August, in Britain, the minute you stop moving about, it’s cold. I will ‘glamp’ again though.  Next time I am thinking of a yurt…