Cool Camping. Laura James

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       intro

       whycampingiscool

      It’s fun, fashionable and easy to do with great style. It offers an unparalleled sense of freedom and allows you to let your imagination run wild.

      Camping is officially cool again. But before you start having nightmares about being trapped in a field with a bus-load of boy scouts, let me explain. Camping has changed a lot. Gone are the days of being stuck next to the couple from hell who can’t wait to get you under their awning so they can subject you to two hours of mind-numbing conversation about double-entry book keeping.

      Today it’s about style, comfort and a sprinkling of glamour. Think Kate Moss at Glastonbury, Airstreams and T@b caravans. Drift off into a fantasy of vintage VW campers, bright white tipis stretching skywards and pretty tents peppered with flowers. Arguably, it was Cath Kidston’s delicious floral tent which kicked off the latest camping craze.

      Imagine sitting round the campfire, eating delicious food and telling ghost stories. Think boys in feather headdresses and girls with fairy wings. This is today’s camping experience.

      Cool camping is also about congregating around the campfire to share stories, sing songs, cook supper, toast marshmallows, or to simply enjoy the hypnotic effect of staring into the flames.

      I didn’t always think like this; the first time I went camping I lasted precisely two-and-a-half hours before booking into the nearest hotel. I wrote the whole thing off as a hideous, never-to-be-repeated experience and refused even to think about it.

      Then one evening at dinner the conversation turned to camping and, listening to the stories around the table, I realised that the reason I hated camping was because I had been doing it all wrong.

      Used to my creature comforts, I had imagined that camping should be an experience of deprivation and that – a little like an endurance test – it was something one simply, well, endured. The thrill of camping, I’d thought, was in living to tell the tale. A few months later I decided to try again. This time, though, I aimed to make it a luxury experience and set about truly thinking of my tent as a home from home.