Camping Revisited!
Bye, bye, Betty Bongo
Last year we said goodbye to Betty bongo, she needed work doing to her and was no longer suitable for our family, she’s gone to an equally loving home.
Mr T and I have always camped together, we bought our first tent together around 2002, before we were married. I asked for a tent for my 10th or 11th birthday so I could camp in the garden. My Mum wasn’t one for camping, but my wonderful Uncle and Auntie, our second parents, were, they used to take my sister and I with them, THEY instilled my love of camping.
We didn’t camp at all last year, not in our own tent, we hired a yurt for one trip and hired a HUGE motorhome for the other, with a king size and a double bed at either end, it was an epic adventure. We travelled across and up the country and back in two weeks, taking in my special cousin’s wedding, the only way we could reasonably do it with our kids and their kit.
A wet, muddy WOMAD festival. Team Taylor felt very smug.
We also did a very wet and muddy WOMAD festival in it enroute! A muddy festival with two small children, one in a wheelchair, is a lot easier when you can go back to a house on wheels, complete with shower (albeit cold apart from the first 30 seconds) and heating.
Now, the camping season is upon us once more, we bought a cheap Lidl family tent last year that didn’t even get taken out of it’s box, so that got put up in the garden last weekend and there was a collective sigh from Mr T and I at it’s general unworthiness. yes, we could camp in it, certainly, it is actually a pretty good little family tent, but we don’t need little, we need HUGE!
If we want to do the camping thing with our kids, which we do, it needs to be right, Thing 2 is only getting bigger, which means the kit she needs gets bigger too, and heavier. Camping with a disabled child with complex needs is far from easy, but to us, camping is a huge part of childhood, a part of childhood that our kids are not going to miss out on due to cerebral stinking palsy.
So, after much discussion, oohing, aarghing, chatting to friends (#enablers, you know who you are), weighing up the pros and cons, we ordered something beautiful. We ordered something beautiful enough to make me want to blog about it! It’s big. It’s very big. It’s also incredibly beautiful and will hopefully be something in which we make some great memories over the next few years, a childhood’s worth and more. And it should take a portable hoist when the day comes that we need one, which isn’t now, but it’s approaching at an alarming rate.
Yesterday this very big box full of tent arrived.
A very large box full of tent was delivered.
And tomorrow we are taking it camping for the first time!
We’re going to need more bunting. More to follow…