I managed one camping trip in 2011. It was a week or so after I discovered I was pregnant. We were in California.
I’d (blimey, how much have I detailed of this already? I can’t remember. I have memory issues at the moment. Apparently the small beautiful parasite still living in my abdomen is somehow eating my brain) I’d found out I was pregnant the day before my birthday. A birthday when I had, no less, arranged to see lots of my favourite San Francisco friends for a meal entirely composed of cocktails and raw fish. And couldn’t tell any of them why I was sitting there looking hungry, sober, sleepy and shellshocked. A few days after I found out, we ran a 12k race. Yes, slowly, but I’m still unbearably smug about it.
And then we went camping. I never want to forget it, that’s the only reason I’m writing it down.
We took the tent and camping gear that we’d left at a friends house when we moved from San Francisco, knowing we were more likely to camp there before anywhere else. I’d booked a campsite on a beach a couple of hours up the coast from the city. Right on the beach, basically. So close you could go to sleep to the sound of the waves and the smell of everybody’s firepit embers. It was practically the most perfect romantic thing I had ever imagined, in theory, and I had been thinking about it for months.
And suddenly, it all felt different. And weird. I was in one of my favourite places in the world, and all I could think about doing was getting home to go to see my GP (I’m not sure why. Because I thought she would say something wise and useful, I think. Which, of course, she didn’t. She said “If you say so” and then sent me off to see the midwives. That’s what they do).
So the whole thing seemed removed from what I expected it to be anyway.
And then it rained. Torrentially.
Torrents of rain. Hard, and constant, and cold and apparently unending, it rained. It started tipping down when we turned off the freeway and into the river valley that leads to the sea. It didn’t stop. The closer we got to the sea, the more it rained.
It poured as we parked the car and sat there, trying to figure out whether to try waiting for a lull in the rain to put the tent up. And we decided we should. And so did. And then, after picking the most sensible tree-shaded corner of the pitch, put the tent up, blew up the air mattress and crawled inside it faster than we’d ever previously managed.
And then we lay there, in grey afternoon light, napping and listening to the Pacific get poured through a sieve onto the tent roof on top of us.
And then feeling it, as it slowly soaked through a vulnerable spot where the top sheet was touching the lining and started pooling at the bottom of the tent.
The nearest town with a shop big enough to speak of was half an hour’s drive away.
Together we went and sullenly ploged around the small shop that seemed to serve as chemist, post office and holiday goods emporium. They had, it turned out, sod all of any use.
It was at this moment that I turned into McGyver. Or, for those not of the right age bracket to remember the reference, to “a person who was going to be able to fix complicated technical problems with only some ripped clothing, a ball of string and some sticky tape”. We bought the only potentially useful things they had: coincidentally, some cheap disposable rain ponchos, a ball of string, and a roll of duct tape.
Together we rigged up some complex canopy, strung from the apex of the tent and six different branches. Theory was, it would catch the rain and divert it away from the tent and safely onto the ground downstream of where we were sleeping. It was not attractive. It was shoddy and looked like it all might collapse at any second.
And, magically, it worked. The rain kept on falling, and the tent stayed dry. All the way through the next day, the rain fell, as we lay in the tent, reading and sleeping and listening to the water hitting the beach that we’d intended to have long romantic walks along.
Our second night there, the rain eased off for a long enough time to make us think that it was going to stop completely (it wasn’t, of course) and decide to have the dinner cooked on the firepit.
It stopped raining, in fact, for exactly long enough to light the fire.
But only just.
We took it in turns to stand over the barbecue, holding an umbrella over the fire and the food. When, eventually the food was ready, we opened the boot of the rental car and had a picnic sitting in the trunk because it was the only place dry enough to eat. To eat food that was a little soggy, that is.
The third day we were there - the day we were leaving - the sun came out. Of course. It looked like this:
And then, mainly because I had to go and catch a flight to another city to do work for a few days, we packed up and left.
And that was my favourite bit of 2011. Or one of them. The one that is currently playing in my head and making me feel better about all the chaos and panic and amazing mess that is to come.
So please excuse my soppiness, and self-indulgence. I just didn’t want 2011 to slip too far away, and head too far into the next bit without remembering this.
There were a lot of good, memorable bits in 2011 for me.
But the wettest camping trip that ever existed is the one I don’t want to forget.