A New Adventure
When the empty months stretch ahead, it can be a good time to go back and pick up old threads…
Laura tore the month of June from the calendar and stared at the picture for July.
A sunflower, with a bee searching for nectar. It was bright and cheerful but beneath it were rows of blank dates.
“Not even a dentist’s appointment!” she yelled at the wall.
There was no reply. There never was. Today the silence seemed deafening.
She’d always kept a month-at-a-glance calendar. For years, each page would be full of plans pencilled in for the weeks ahead.
Now, looking at the empty days, she knew she needed to do something.
It wasn’t that she never went out. She belonged to a book club, and an exercise class. She didn’t put the dates on the calendar because she knew the routine. Besides, the classes stopped as soon as the children were off school and grandparent duties took over.
Laura didn’t have grandchildren, or children. It was just her – and she was in need of a change.
“What if I live to be a hundred?” she muttered.
“People do. All those years ahead with nothing to add to the box.”
Early in their marriage she and Ronald had started keeping leaflets, catalogues and photographs of places they visited. The pile of mementoes grew as the years passed and they bought a wooden box to keep them in.
On cold winter evenings they’d open the box, and reminisce about favourite places, recall people they’d met and laugh over the many small disasters. They called it the treasure box.
She hadn’t looked at it for two years. Not since Ronald died.
“Where did I put it?” she asked the wall.
She found it in the spare room behind piles of books waiting to go to the charity shop. It was an attractive box, heavy with the weight of so many memories.
She brushed off the accumulated dust and struggled to drag it into the living room.
That afternoon she began leafing through the contents. Soon she was lost in memories, often of things that had gone wrong.
That time their hired motor home broke down crossing a remote New Zealand Pass, the lightning storm over Ayers Rock, Ronald breaking his arm at the Devil’s Causeway.
Then, at the bottom of the box, in a worn brown envelope, she found some faded black and white snapshots. A young girl, hair in plaits, freckled nose, wide grin, standing in front of a canvas tent. Herself aged fourteen, on her first holiday away from home.
A second photo showed the campsite, the tents in a straight row, their sides rolled up to let the air blow through. In another she was at a trestle table peeling a mountain of potatoes, still laughing.
This time there were two other girls with her. What were their names?
Freda and Ellen? What would they doing now, over half a century later?
That holiday had been such fun. They’d spent weeks planning: making lists, practising putting up the tents on the grass outside the Guide hut, learning how to light a fire using only two matches, and then how to cook on it. No barbecues then.
No toilets or showers either. She remembered washing in lukewarm water in a plastic bowl. She shuddered as she recalled the muddy path leading to a wooden shack with a rusty, corrugated tin roof that housed the chemical toilet.
Nettles grew thickly around the rickety door, inside spiders lurked in webs in the corners of the ceiling, and the smell…
She put the photographs back in the envelope and turned back to the brochures.
City breaks, walking holidays, tours. They’d always stayed in hotels or guesthouses. Maybe if they’d had children they would have tried camping.
Or maybe not. She giggled as she thought of Ronald sleeping in a tent. He liked some luxury on holiday, preferring to stay at country inns or city hotels, where there were comfortable beds and someone else to organise the food.
They’d had some great trips, but she didn’t want to revisit places they’d been to together. She wanted to keep those memories as they were.
She needed something different – an adventure.
Over the next few days Laura kept returning to the photographs of the Guide camp. Remembering all the fun and the laughter.
She’d enjoyed camping. She’d not slept in a tent for over fifty years. She remembered the sound of the rain on the canvas lulling her to sleep.
Could she try it again? At her age?
It was more of a dream really, something to think about on sleepless nights.
She should plan a conventional holiday – a few days in the Cotswolds, a cruise to Alaska, a train trip to Italy or a hotel in Southern France.
“Snowdonia,” she said aloud, at three in the morning. “Camping, in a tent, in Snowdonia. Near enough to drive home if I want to.”
With that, she turned over and slept.
Next morning she went for a drive and found a campsite that looked suitable, only twenty miles away.
“Could I have a look around the site?” she asked, in the small camp shop and reception. “I haven’t camped for a very long time. I’m thinking of starting again.”
“You wouldn’t be alone,” the site manager, told her. “Lots of people return to camping when they retire. They like the freedom. Take a good look around. Come back in if you’ve any questions.”
Laura wandered past campervans and caravans. She looked in the facilities block, marvelling at the spotlessly clean toilets and showers, the washing-up area, and laundry. Camping had certainly moved on in the past fifty years.
She began to feel excited. This was definitely a possibility.
Beyond the facilities block was a field of colourful tents. None like the khaki ridge tents of her teenage days.
Her stomach rumbled as the smell of steak grilling on a barbecue drifted across the field. She could imagine herself eating bacon rolls for breakfast before setting off for a day walking the numerous footpaths nearby.
“It’s a lovely site,” she said, when she returned to the shop. “Do I need to book?”
“Would it be a tent or a caravan?”
“Tent,” Laura said.
“You should be all right to just turn up, but ring first during the school holidays, just to be sure.”
There was a camping exhibition advertised. Laura planned a day out.
The halls were crowded with families inspecting caravans, mobile homes and tents of all shapes, sizes and prices.
She was briefly tempted by the comfort of the mobile homes, but camping in a tent was what she wanted.
She found a small tent with room to sleep, and to prepare food if it rained. It was light to carry, and, the salesman assured her, easy to put up.
He demonstrated by erecting an identical tent in five minutes.
She found it hard not to smile as he seemed to assume she was buying for a grandchild. She didn’t disabuse him. The fewer people knew her intentions, the less she was likely to be put off her adventure before she even started.
She placed an order for a tent, a sleeping bag, a mini cooker and a set of camping saucepans.
She intended to start with the minimum. Her first trip may well be her last.
But even though she wanted an adventure, the thought of laying her sleeping bag directly on the ground didn’t appeal.
She added a good quality airbed, with a built-in electric pump, to her order then went home, her bag heavy with brochures for a myriad of equipment, which she may or may not need in the future.
When the tent arrived she waited until her neighbours had driven off for the day before taking it into the garden to practise putting it up.
Bob would have come to help at the first opportunity, while his wife, Sylvia, would wring her hands and try to persuade her it was a crazy idea.
Laura knew it was a crazy idea. But for the moment she was enjoying herself, making plans, looking ahead a little.
She opened the box, careful not to damage it in case she wanted to return everything.
The instructions were detailed. She followed them meticulously.
It took her longer than it had taken the salesman, but in less than an hour she was sitting in her deckchair drinking a mug of tea and admiring her handiwork.
The following week she told Bob and Sylvia she was going away for a few days, packed the car and drove off.
One year later. July 1
Laura turned the page on the calendar. The picture was Snowdonia. Llyn Ogwen.
She smiled, remembering last July. Her first tentative camping trip. This was a memory to savour.
She recalled walking in the mountains, joining an impromptu game of cricket, being invited to a barbecue by the family in the tent next door.
Above all she remembered the friends she’d made.
She’d gone for one night and stayed four, coming home with a site brochure to add to her treasure box and the determination to travel further next time.
She felt a buzz of excitement as she saw weeks blocked off, Scotland written across them. She had several lists. One for clothes, one for food, a third for camping equipment.
Planning was fun. It was a part of the actual holiday.
She poured a glass of juice, cut a slice of the Victoria sponge she’d made yesterday, and went into the garden. It was already warm. She sat in the sunshine, listening to the hum of bees on the lavender.
This month she was camping by Loch Ness, meeting up with people she’d met last September when she’d camped in the Lake District.
Judith, who always travelled independently, but enjoyed having someone to gossip with on a long walk.
Pam, who drove a campervan around because her companion, an aged Labrador, wasn’t happy staying in a hotel, no matter how dog-friendly it was, and Betty and Tim, a cheerful couple who enjoyed conversation and company when visiting stately homes, or ancient archeological sites.
They’d agreed to camp at the same site, for the same week. How much they did together was flexible.
Ideal. Just as Laura wanted.
At the end of the week the others would move on. It was the start of the school holidays and the site would become busy, full of families.
Laura had booked for a second week. The family she had met on that first night camping in Snowdonia was coming.
They had kept in touch over the year. The children had made Christmas cards for her and often sent her messages with news of their school life. She was looking forward to seeing them.
Camping had been a great success, but maybe the tent had served its purpose. She’d proved she could do it. She could put her tent up quickly, but it wasn’t much fun doing it in the rain – and taking a wet tent home and drying it in the garden was difficult.
She wanted a more comfortable bed, too. She liked the way Pam simply arrived on site, raised the roof of her campervan and was putting the kettle on within a few minutes.
She had a significant birthday in the autumn. She might treat herself to a small campervan. Her mind buzzing with plans she went back indoors, smiling.
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