How do you get to be the camping guru? The same way, I guess, I came to be the chook guru, and that is to write about it in the "I've been everywhere" vein. A couple of years ago all manner of people stopped looking down on me as the weirdo who keeps chooks and started asking me stupid questions. Like, "Do you need a rooster?". What for? "Eggs." No you don't. "Then how does that work?" Almost overnight keeping chooks became the ultimate urban expression of sustainability.
Well, suddenly people who seem forever tripping off to this or that resort are asking me about camping, and you know what that means? In a few months we'll be crowded out of our favourite camping spots.
In my column in The Herald today I describe what I see as the five levels of camping, ranging from the set-up that fits in a car boot through the tent covered with a gable-roofed silver tarp to a caravan with canvas sides or, at least, canvas bedroom walls.
My family has been camping, once each year for, typically, three weeks, for almost three decades, and in that time we've vacillated often between having ridiculously excessive equipment and marginally excessive equipment. We've never camped from the car boot.
If I were to give just two tips to new family campers it would be, one, to put a long and sturdy ridge pole under the length of the silver tarp to stop wind or water destroying it, and, two, to buy a gas-240volt camping fridge (they're 12volt too, but forget that), a piece of equipment they'll have for years and one that beats the vagaries of ice every day.
Do you have any tips for new and old campers? And if you're new to camping, you're free ask questions.
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