Camping with Friends: Hot Coals and Tent Poles!

“So, err Daz, where did you put the tent poles?...”

Hmm, sounds ominous! I’ll come back to that question in a moment.

A camping trip that has been in the diary for a little while now has been a night out with a group of lads, most of whom I’ve been good friends with since nursery school. We’ve grown up playing football together, raced our matchbox cars around race tracks that we made from clothes pegs, we’ve drawn blood after many a tumultuous race on our skateboards down the alleys. We even built a memorable ‘camp’ up the woods out of sticks and discarded junk which we called ‘smelly camp’ because we once found a dog poo outside the entrance. Alas, that was all a long time ago. I could also regale a tale or two of the more colourful teenage years in which we discovered girls and alcohol but they’re probably not appropriate for this blog! Nowadays the lads enjoy far more sensible pursuits such as football, DIY, football, spending inordinate sums of money on craft beer and football. We’re all so grown up now!

Sadly the lads haven’t really embarked on a proper camping adventure since our spritely days in the scouts. I’m often bestowing upon them the virtues of camping and the great outdoors and encouraging them to get out with me on an adventure. I’ve sat with them in the pub and wittered on about camping tirelessly over a pint (or three). I’ve even spammed them with links to my latest blog posts and Instagram photos. Sadly, when we spoke about it, I recall one of the lads questioning the point of living in a tent when you already have a perfectly good home (sigh, I was really up against it with this lot!).

Finally they succumbed and agreed to come out on a camping trip. Indeed, I must add that part of the reason for them doing this was because some of the lads were also being pestered by their kids to take them out on a camping trip. The lads wanted to see what it was like first before committing to such an undertaking. So the pressure was on me to showcase all that was good about this wonderful pastime! We agreed a date in mid-june and I prayed to the weather gods to help me out with a healthy dose of sunshine.

As the big day drew closer, I felt a little bit like our old Scout leader – Arkela; barking out instructions on how to get to the campsite, advising them on what equipment they need to bring along and what I could cook us all for dinner. Secretly, I think I might have let the power go to my head as my responses to all the queries on our whatsapp chat steadily became more autocratic. I’ll let them be the judge of that though.

The plan was simple, I’d sort out the tent, cook kit and organise our dinner. Daz said he’d also bring his 4 man tent, while Paul got the food in for breakfast and Phil was bringing a football. Other than that the lads just needed to bring some sleeping kit appropriate clothing and some liquid refreshment.

So far so good and I was looking forward to our get together. We’ve all got so much going on in our lives that we really don’t get to see each other as often as we ought to and organising a night out often becomes a bit of a military exercise. I for one was looking forward to sitting down with them around the fire, cracking open a beer and sharing a few tales.

When the big day arrived, I checked the weather forecast (things were looking good!), loaded up the car with an inordinate amount of kit for an overnight camping trip, and picked up Ant who lives nearby. We arrived at camp early so that we could secure a nice spot and get my two tents pitched. I had brought my four man tent for the lads to share and my two man tent for me. Apparently! I’ve been known to snore so I didn’t want to put the fellas through that pain and make them endure a sleepless night.

The rest of the gang arrived early in the afternoon and I was looking forward to watching Daz pitch his new Bear Grylls tent. I said as much to Daz as I reached into the cooler for a beer, but it was at this point that he passed it over to me and asked if I could do the honours. Of course I obliged, but it didn’t take long before I noticed that there wasn’t any tent poles in the bag.

“err Daz, where did you put the tent poles?”

“Aren’t they in the bag”

“No mate, definitely not in the bag”

Daz desperately searched his car while reeling off a series of expletives that I couldn’t possibly broadcast on this blog. Meanwhile the rest of us were finding the whole situation rather amusing. ‘Fail to prepare and prepare to fail’ was one of the cliché lines that we found ourselves quoting!

What a predicament we find ourselves in. It’s a two hour round trip for Daz to retrieve his tent poles. The alternative option was for someone to source another tent from a nearby camping shop or squeeze five burly, soon to be drunk, blokes into my four man tent. We went for the simple option and agreed that three fellas would fit in the bedroom, leaving two of the lads to sleep comfortably in the vestibule. It may be a tad cosy but useful that we’re all good friends!

With the sleeping situation sorted it was time to explore camp and show the lads what this camping malarkey is all about. Park Farm Campsite in Bodiam, East Sussex is a lovely camp site. It is made up of a series of fields in which you can pitch up and has all the usual facilities that you expect to get at a campsite. But best of all, you can have a fire. There are lots of rope swings hanging off the trees and of course we felt obliged to unleash our inner child and have a bit of fun. Telephone signal is pretty poor (I see that as a positive!) and there’s even a nice pub within walking distance (I can recommend the ploughmans!). My one criticism of this camp site is that it can get a bit crowded during peak season bank holiday and summer holiday weekends. My wife and I much prefer to visit the campsite on the quieter weekends when things are a little more sedate.

On our return to camp, the football (and other games) was brought out to play while I decided to get the fire started. I wanted to get the fire ready so that I could cook us a nice lasagne in the dutch oven. Even though we was on a campsite, I was keen to demonstrate a little bit of camp craft so I prepped our firewood, gathered some dry grass trimmings from the field to make a tinder bundle and used my flint and steel kit to ignite some char cloth. I placed the smouldering char cloth in to the centre of the tinder bundle and was able to blow it into a flame and get the fire started – success! I thanked the fire gods for not making me look like a complete muppet in front of my mates!

Lots of people that I’ve spoken to seem to wonder how on earth you can cook a lasagne over the fire. The reality is that it’s pretty simple, all you need is a dutch oven! I prepped my veg, set up my cooking tripod and hung the dutchy over the fire and combined my mincemeat, veg, chopped tomatoes, puree and seasoning to make a Bolognese. I left that to simmer for half an hour before taking the pot off the fire and removing half of the Bolognese mix. I then started to construct the lasagne by adding a layer of pasta and white sauce. The rest of the Bolognese mix was added and then topped off with another layer of pasta, white sauce and grated cheese. Pop the lid on, hang it back on the fire, put some coals on top of the lid and cook for another half hour or so. It’s important to keep the fire under control throughout the cooking, you don’t want it blazing, nor do you just want a hot bed of coals, somewhere in between with a moderate heat should suffice. The good thing about doing this with the tripod is also that you can adjust the height of the pot if you do need to reduce the heat.

To complete this meal, I also warmed up some garlic bread (it’s a taste sensation!!) over the grill, these were wrapped in foil to prevent them from burning and I rotated them every few minutes.

Et voila, a meal fit for a king! If I say so myself, it was rather lovely. Whether I’m at home or out camping, lasagne is, by some margin, my favourite meal.

So, with our stomachs full and the fire stoked up, there was nothing else to do other than crack open a beer and enjoy the evening. There was just one downside, the weather had let me down! We kept on getting sporadic rain showers from around 6pm. Nothing heavy, but enough to make us take occasional shelter under a nearby tree. Happily we were soon able to re-convene around the fire and carry on teasing Daz about his tent poles.

It was a shame about the rain, but I don’t think it dampened our spirits. Having exhausted our supply of beer, we headed off to bed. I won’t lie, I was glad that I could retreat to my little two man tent and snore myself into a stupor!

The next morning greeted us with a nice warm day, by 6.30 the sunshine rapidly transformed the tents into sauna’s. I dread to think what it was like in the other tent, I expected it to be a heady aroma of farts and body odour. As I popped my head through the door to greet the happy campers, I was not disappointed. I reminded myself to ensure that the tent gets a good airing before it’s next use.

The lads were all in good spirits though, Paul had a cold night owing to the fact that he was too tall for his sleeping bag. Ant was complaining about his air bed being uncomfortable. Daz, Phil and Ben seemed as though they hadn’t had a great deal of sleep. Phil, bless him, looked as though he might have had the worse night of the bunch. Having gone to bed at 1am, the truth of course was that none of us were firing on all cylinders. Time to get the kettle on.

What a lovely morning though, the camp was peaceful, the sun was shining and the birds were singing. Some of us may be feeling a little dishevelled but there are certainly worse places to wake up. All that was missing was the alluring smell of bacon frying, this was Paul’s time to shine as he cooked us a lovely breakfast. Thanks Paul, the sausages were cooked to perfection!

Perhaps the least enjoyable part of camping is the morning pack up. Not so bad when you’re backpacking, but when you’ve brought everything bar the kitchen sink it can become a bit of an ordeal and a bit of a mental torment knowing that I’ll have to unpack the tent again when I get home so that it can dry.

So was, the camp a success, did I manage to showcase all that was good about camping? The weather didn’t really help, nor did the cosy sleeping quarters but I’d like to think that the lads had a good time.  We ate well, we drank well (too well!) and we laughed loudly. In my mind it was a success but I’ll leave that judgement down to the lads (feel free to comment below chaps!).

If I’m able to convince them to come out on another camp it’ll be good to bring along some more tents, stay an extra night so that we can amble down to the pub and why not bring along the wives and kids and make a proper weekend of it.

Thanks as always for reading, let me know what you think or even tell me about how you tried to get your friends interested in camping.

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