Camping Sucks Less When Drinking Beer

That's my son.  Not me.

On my eighth birthday I had an epiphany so vivid that even now, thirty years later, I am able to bring it to my mind with crystal clear, Betamax clarity.  It was the heady summer of 1980 and the musical stylings of Freddie Mercury and Randy Crawford were battling for my affections.  For weeks I had pestered my mum and dad for a tent and finally I was granted my wish. 

The tent was a small, two-person vision in red and green manmade fibres.  It took six grown men four hours to assemble and that night, the night of my birthday, I was allowed to take a friend and sleep out until morning.  Needless to say it was a sobering early lesson in how disappointing life can be.  There really is nothing in the world like being woken up dry mouthed and sweaty, zipped inside a nylon sleeping bag that is itself locked within another and much larger sheet of nylon.  At that tender and impressionable age the names Mr. & Mrs. Smith meant a slightly dotty old couple who lived down the road but it was definitely within the confines of my first tent that my lifelong love of luxurious boutique hotels was formed.  My parents must have been very disappointed by my reluctance to ever use my birthday tent again but in that early morning sunrise, among the ants and spiders and biscuit crumbs and the terrible, terrible smells I made a solemn vow that I would never go camping again.

That was a vow I kept until two weeks ago when under relentless pressure from my two sons we bought a tent and went with friends to an Oxfordshire campsite not far from where I live.  In order to minimize the pain of the early morning wake up I decided that I would turn to nature in the form of old mother alcohol to see me through.  There has been a good deal of column inches devoted recently to the rise in sales of real ale so being the contentious food writer I thought I’d merge my need for booze and my approaching deadline by arranging a local beer tasting for my fellow campers. 

The rules for the tasting were simple.  I wanted beers from Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire that I could get from a supermarket.  The tasting itself would be done blind with no one knowing what the beers were while they tasted.  The beers were as follows... Pride Of Oxford (£2), Hook Norton Twelve Days (£2.05), Rebellion (£2.15) and John Hampden from the Chiltern Brewery (£2.40).

So far, so good.  One note of caution for any budding food writers though is don't do it when your drunk.  Or at least if you do get drunk don't expect to be able to read your notes, or find your notes, or make any notes.  The upshot of all this is that the winner of the contest is lost in the mists of time and the haze of being a bit pissed.

As a footnote I would add that from what I can remember all the beers were delicious and an excellent way of alleviating the awfulness of the early morning campsite wake-up.  I slept soundly that night and woke refreshed and ready for what the day had in store.  I was reminded of the wisdom of bar owner and drunk Doug Coughlin, as played by the excellent Bryan Brown in the movie Cocktail, whose life motto was, “beer is for breakfast drink or begone".