Thursday 11 August 2011

Camping!

I hate camping! i really do! my brain is just not wired for this kind of living. I mean why would i want to leave my lovely dry warm house with TV, hot water, comfy beds, cooker, fridge, stereo etc to live in a cloth bag, with a wee gas stove in the open, getting eating alive by midgies, being perpetually damp, uncomfortable sleeping on uneven ground - all in the name of a 'nice relaxing holiday'? well mebbe i've got it wrong - hmmm?


Mrs soup and I spent our honeymoon in a tent on the south coast of ireland 12 years ago, it rained in biblical proportions for seven days and seven nights? the tent gave up on day 2, facilitating a surreal days hunt for a new tent (another story in itself!)

So wet we had to wear body condoms!
Mrs soup and I tried again in the wilds of Glencoe where the groundsheet ended up being rigged as a roofsheet just to exist outside the tent. We tried a roadtrip over Scotland which ended up with the coldest showers ever, 2 tons of concrete 1 inch below wherever you tried to put a tent peg in and a realy bad cold to boot!

At this point i gave up! Mrs Soup loves nothing better than a night under canvas with our 2 boys and has had to do this herself for the last 7 years which gives me no sense of guilt whatsoever as each time i sit in my comfortable, quiet, empty house with a nice cold beer, a good WW2 documentary and an excellent Chicken Dhansak from the local Indian restaurant, i always recieve a call in which i can hear wailing children and rain hammering off canvas. As i hang up each time, i have to admit, i snuggle a little deeper into the couch as i contemplate a nice deep bath before i pop another can of beer and enjoy Rommel's further exploits in the Libyan desert narrated by Lord Olivier!

I may have been slightly wrong!

A campaign of intense psychological bullying over a couple of months from the other soups persuaded me to try camping one more time. Location: Mallaig!  4000mm (yes! four thousand! 400cm 4 metres!) of rain per year! Great! i thought, another way i can say never again! the die is cast! they will never push the point again if i do this. so off we went.....


Arrival

5 hours driving later, we arrived. set up the tent, connected the stove, inflated the mattresses and the rain started once i'd lost 2 pints of blood to the 'Mallaig-greater vampiric -Midge' great! i thought, one more point to the home dwellers!, lots of booze with our friends who were camping as well and off to bed where i spent a miserable night sliding down an uneven mattress onto soupboy jnr while the rain hammered on the tent and Mrs Soup's mattress was secretly deflating as she slept (surely she'll get the point now!).


Morning

Woke up early, groggy, damp and had to endure coffee in a plastic mug (Lesson 1 - take a decent mug! it takes up the same volume as a plastic one and makes coffee taste so much better!). Thought "this is it! they'll never ask me again" anyways, after coffee, my friend Scott and I took a drive into Mallaig for barbeque food and then things suddenly changed! Scott is an avid fisherman and i decided i might as well give it a try, so off to Loch Morar we went and hired 2 boats for the clans to peruse in while we marooned ourselves on an island in the loch and spent an afternoons fishing, BINGO! what a great afternoon. Really enjoyed fishing and made a mental not to do lots more of this.
Best mates off on an adventure

Soup and Scott trying to look as if they know what they're doing

The joy of dry land

There seemingly is a monster here as well!

The explorers who actually do know what they are doing!
Cast!

Not a sausage!

Rained like hell for the BBQ but was feeling fresh after the fishing so it unusually didn't seem so bad to cook beans with a groundsheet over one's head?

Next day

Fortune smiled, a perfect day in every way, got to the beach and did beach stuff all day, swam, fished, paddled, rock pooled, picnic'ed, crabbed, even laughed! great day, even spent the evening fishing off the rocks when the tide was in. Must say, the sands of Morar are a joy to behold and must be recommended to everyone to visit at least once in their lives!

Atmosphere!

Testing the water

Quick! there's one!

Aint nothing like wet trousers and feet when you're seven!
This is better than a bike when you're seven and looking for freedom!

Or even five!
Next day, rain again - so what! i was returning to Soup HQ this morning to spend a day drying things out but seeing as it hasn't stopped raining in Haddington since (or Scotland for that matter) the garage is full of damp stuff - little lost!

You never know - i might try camping again!

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