Campr – Everything Camping

Britain Goes Camping

Camping grew from a practical solution for sleeping soldiers to a leisure activity thanks, surprisingly to the development of the bicycle in the nineteenth century.

A tailor called Thomas Hiram Holding designed a lightweight tent that could be carried on a bike and wrote about his experiences in Cycle and Camp founding the cycle camping movement.

Viva la camping

Amazingly camping was once seen as subversive. This sounds peculiar in the era of glamping and highstreets stuffed full of camping shops but in the 1930s camping was almost snuffed out of existence by a series of government bills designed to restrict it’s growth. The establishment worried camping was being practised by the wrong ‘sought’ and we might see the countryside overrun with tent carrying poor.

Rise of the camping club

New laws included a ban on the sale of bread, butter and milk on campsites and a minimum of distance of 12ft from your pitch to a hedge.

The camping club was excused from these rules leading to it’s establishment as a bastion of good camping values. This was supported by the rise of the scouting movement but as the second world war came round camping was again restricted.

The programme explored camping’s struggle to gain momentum after ww2 until it was shot back into the public imagination with Edmond Hilary’s assent of Everest. As new camping materials such as nylon became available their cheapness and durability helped camping become attractive to ordinary British people.

Camping holidays

In the 1950s the freedom of camping holidays were an alternative to the restrictive boarding houses and let poorer families experience a holiday for the first time.

Membership of the camping club soared from 15,000 to 50,000 creating a frankly terrifying subculture of fancy dress parades and morris dancing as campsites became holiday parks. Then as car ownership grew, smaller campsites away from towns and cities appeared to serve the more adventurous camper.

‘Camping light’ was the buzz word as trailer tents made camping easier and families headed over the channel to experience their first foreign holiday.

The fall and rise of Camping

As the 80s rolled round camping’s image suffered as the economy picked up and the realities of the British climate set in, camping became dowdy and drab.

But unexpectedly camping’s popularity had a revival in the last ten years. Music festivals introduced a whole generation to camping and it finally became ‘cool’.

The programme finishes with a look at glamping on Feather Down Farm, harking back to Edwardian roots. Camping’s history has come a neat circle as the toffs who started it gave way to the working classes before camping splintered into an activity popular with all parts of society. Of course it all comes back to the need to escape and feel at one with nature. Lovely!

Britain Goes Camping gave a broad overview of the history of camping and provides an illuminating insight into the origins of our sometimes peculiar hobby and they didn’t even mention Carry on Camping! (Shame…).