By Tanya Gold
Last spring, I borrowed a beautiful new campervan to drive from Cornwall to Dorset and back. It was as stylish as a boutique hotel: black, with two double beds (one up, one down), swivel seats and a kitchen with two hobs and a fridge.
I should have picked up a female friend and driven to Italy in splendour. Instead I took four males to Dorset: a large husband; a small son; his friend; and Virgil the dog.
Tanya Gold outside a Cath Kidston tent at Glastonbury, she woke up screaming to someone urinating on the tent
It was my fault. I am not good at camping. I woke up screaming when I went to Glastonbury because someone was weeing on my tent.
I thought a campervan would be different but I do not know how to pack a campervan. Practised campers do not pack duvets, pillows, suitcases, vast piles of books, toys and dog cages.
When I wanted to change its use from sleeping to cooking to dining, I had to unpack everything, and the respectable campers at Corfe Castle campsite thought we were disgusting with our carrier bags littering the site.
Containing five mammals, the campervan didn’t smell so good in the mornings either. Then there was Virgil. I thought he would love the trip to Enid Blyton land — the Famous Five (and Virgil the Dog)!
Tanya said she thought going in a campervan would be different to camping – but she was mistaken
I was wrong again. He hated it. He hated the drive, and the loss of his house, and gas fire, and his 11 potential beds.
He hated that he was tied up at the site — rules! — on a 40ft lead. Good dogs are not tied up! He developed a pleading expression which did not leave his beautiful face for the whole of the trip. He sat exactly 40ft from the campervan, so I would know how he felt.
The weather in Dorset was fine. But we drove back to Cornwall and into a ferocious storm. I said: ‘We will still camp at Land’s End — we have paid in advance.’ The site was almost empty. The owner looked amazed we had come. She put us behind the toilet block to shelter us from the wind. The children blew over anyway. Virgil cried. He had thought Dorset was the nadir, and he was wrong.
Even so, I decided to have a dinner party. I invited my mother, my sister, her husband and her two sons for a campervan dinner. Incredibly, they came, carrying salads across the site in the gale.
We ate hamburgers as the van rocked. It was amazing. It was unique. There has never been a dinner party like that.
The misery came later. At 4 am, as the gale screamed around us, a little face showed itself, upside down in the gloom. ‘I’m wet,’ it moaned. The extendable campervan roof was not designed for Atlantic gales. I got up to console him and stood in Virgil’s water bowl which my husband had, inexplicably, left on the floor. I screamed. Everyone got into the lower bed but nobody slept.
We went home the next morning, two days early. Virgil spent 48 hours in front of the gas fire, drying his paws. Next time, he will go to the dog hotel. I might go with him.
But the children loved it.