Politrells Go Camping

Lansing was concerned that Ethan was nearing the critical age after which he would no longer be interested in camping, so we headed out a few Saturdays ago to equip ourselves with camping gear. The only tent we have is a 2-man pop-up, so we knew we'd have to upgrade. I have a horror of small spaces, and an aversion to sleeping directly on the ground, so we were looking for something roomy enough for an air-mattress. Given the weather in England, we also wanted space to play in case of rain, and we wanted to be able to stand upright inside. We came home with this:

Which was a little bigger than we'd expected. It's kind of hard to gauge these things from a 3x5-inch diagram. We had a trial run in our back garden, and after unfolding the thing there was some discussion re. taking it back to the store and exchanging it for something a little more understated (and not weighing 60 kilos), but in the end that sounded like more work than it was worth. So if you and 20 of your friends or relatives would like to come camping in England sometime, consider yourselves invited!

Ethan out on the back forty. That's some serious acreage.

Inside the main tent there are 2 4-man sleeping compartments. We put Avery's bed in one of them and our air mattress in the other, made a bed for Ethan, put all our gear inside, and still had an insane amount of floor-space. It was fairly ridiculous for a 2-day trip, but next summer we're hoping to go for a couple of weeks and then we'll be glad to have the room, I'm sure.

We went southwest to Swanage, which looks like this:

It was about a 2 1/2-hour drive, which is nearing Avery's limits of tolerance for the car. She toggles between three modes of behavior on long rides: Fighting the Restraints, Drunken Singing, and Comatose.

Somehow we managed to fill the cargo space for ONE NIGHT of camping.

It was a good trial run and because it was sunny it gave us a false sense of optimism and we'll probably go again soon. The beaches down there are gorgeous and also they have thousand-year-old castles to explore, if you're tired of the gorgeous beach.

More photos are here. (yes, I'm now on Flickr, Facebook, and Blogger- inescapable!)