At ten past six on Wednesday morning Alfie was standing in the porch of Hayley's tent in his pyjamas and wellies, telling a sheep to go home. The sheep, which was on the other side of a wall and had no plans to, looked at him for a while and carried on eating. Behind me, Rob was still asleep with one arm out of his sleeping bag, and the whole of Wharfedale was gold.
We'd booked two nights in the May half-term, Tuesday 27 to Thursday 29, in a field by the river near Burnsall. Hayley lent us the tent: a four-berth dome she and Jordan took to a festival before Ivy, with a porch and a smell I can only call faithful. Isla was less than a week off nine. Alfie had been talking about it since the first of May, mostly to the cat.
Putting it up
It took fifty minutes, and about thirty-five of them were Rob and me reading the instructions Hayley had thoughtfully left in the bag. Nobody had brought a mallet. Rob knocked the pegs in with a stone from the river, and a man from the next pitch lent us a proper one without saying a word, which I thought was kind and Rob felt was a verdict.
The pitch was £28 a night. It was grass, a tap, a shower block with hot water and, from our door, a view of the river shallow enough to cross in wellies. Dad had lent us his two-ring gas stove and a camping kettle older than me. Mum had sent a flask and a note that said "don't let Alfie near the water on his own", which she had underlined, because she knows him.
What we packed, and what we forgot
- Sleeping bags and roll mats, borrowed from Mum and Dad's loft
- Head torches, including Alfie's dinosaur one, which he wore to the toilet block
- Waterproofs and wellies for everybody, never needed the waterproofs
- Bacon, sausages, rolls, beans, pasta, eggs, a loaf and a big bag of marshmallows
- A bag of clothes each, and two fleece blankets for the porch
- Hayley's baby wipes, found in the tent pocket, which were the most-used item of the trip
We forgot a tin opener, which is how the beans on Tuesday night came to be opened with a penknife by Rob, an event neither of us wishes to describe. We forgot washing-up liquid, so the pans got hot water and a squirt of Isla's shampoo. And we forgot that Alfie will find the one deep bit of any river, and that this takes more than one spare pair of socks. He went in over his wellies on Tuesday afternoon, trying to rescue a stick. Wet socks went on the tent roof. He wore my spare pair on Wednesday, pulled up over his knees like a very small footballer.
The nights
It was dry and sunny both days, about 20 degrees by the river, and then it dropped to five at night, which I hadn't thought about. Alfie slept in his coat inside his sleeping bag, and I slept in two jumpers. Isla read by torchlight until half past nine with a Katherine Rundell, and then lay awake listening to every noise in the field. It never really got dark, and the birds started at a quarter to five.
At two in the morning on the first night, Alfie sat up and said, "The sheep are shouting." I said they were just sheep. "They're shouting at us," he said, with such certainty that I lay awake for another hour agreeing with him.
What we did in between was very little. We paddled, we threw stones, we walked along the river to the village and back, we ate sausage rolls on a wall. Rob cooked bacon on the stove at seven each morning with a cup of tea beside him, looking like a man in an advert for a life he's never had time for. Nobody asked for a screen. I noticed that on the second afternoon and then decided not to notice it again.
What it cost
The pitch was £56 for the two nights, food was £38 and petrol £12, so £106 in all, or £13.25 per person per night. The sleeping bags, tent and stove were borrowed, which is the real saving. A tent like Hayley's, new, would have cost more than the entire trip, and I'm not ready to buy one until we know we'll do it again.
Which we will. Alfie asked on the drive home if we could "live in the tent forever", and Isla spent the drive from Addingham planning her birthday sleepover, which is six days away and, as far as she's concerned, the only thing in the calendar. Jean had fed Mabel and watered every one of the new tomato plants, and left a note on the table: "Cat fed. Plants fine. Mabel sulking." Hayley wants the tent back, eventually. I've told her we'd like one more go first.
