Camping in an English Summer

An email came in the last week from a company that I sometimes buy a swim suit from, or a shirt or a pair of trousers and always when there is a special offer on.This message offered up to 60% off in the end of summer sale! 

Now I know that the weather in the UK has not been that special or even a little bit summery, but the morning sunrise when I get up to go swimming, as I did yesterday, or for a bike ride this morning, is still shining in the windows on the front of our house; the two bay windows of our little mock Georgian mid terrace house. It didn’t happen for long because the clouds started to drift in but it does mean that it is still summer time in my book, since it never peeps in the front windows for a good two thirds of the year. 

I do feel sorry for families with young children and not much money for whom a camping holiday is all they can afford. Camping in bad weather can be misery. Steve and I packed camping in about twenty five years ago, when we went to Shropshire triathlon and it rained solid, sheeting rain for 99% of the weekend. We were just a soggy mess by race day. Shropshire Council’s Ellesmere Triathlon has very often been a qualifying event for World Championships and more often than not in those days is was a National Championships too. That was why we went that far to do a race in a small town like that. 

On race morning we put on our race kit and before we left the place we were camping in, we put our wetsuits on over our kit, to walk to the start. It rained for checking the bikes in transition; it rained as we joined the queue to get in the water for the swim in a small lake that was quite a muddy colour after several days of heavy rain. It rained on the bike route and it rained for nearly all the run until the last kilometre when the sun came brilliantly out not quite soon enough. Some people were taken off in the ambulance wrapped up with silver blankets around their shivering bodies. 

Some friends of ours had gone to Tenby last weekend to go a spaced out over the weekend Iron distance race. They had gale force winds as well as the rain. Making yourself cold and miserable is as my old mum so often told me ‘It’s not clever and it’s not funny.’ I am old enough now to see the folly in suffering in a tent when you don’t have to and my advice, particularly when you are facing a gruelling event is to make sure that you are warm, nicely fed with no washing up to do, and most importantly comfortable the day and the evening and the night before you absolutely have to, go out in it. Set yourself up to feel good before you start. It does help not to feel like something the cat dragged in before you start your big event. If you can afford a hotel book yourself in one, don’t turn up at a race wet and tired.