I saw this thread a while ago now and meant to add my wee bit to it. (Or what started life as a "wee bit")
My Auld Man worked in the Fife pits so had, as every other British Miner had, only 2 weeks holiday in the summer and spent a large part of the year working towards the annual family camping trip. Their major luxury was the car, no mean thing as I can remember when there were only two other families in "our street" had cars. I'm showing my age here, but I remember a Hillman Minx, a two-tone red and black number with chrome trim.
So when the morning of the big day came my dad, sister and myself would invariably sit in the car for what seemed like an eternity waiting for mum to appear. And then would start the Auld Man's one liners... "Are we away with everything we've forgot?", or when the screen-wash water ran out and the muck was spread more evenly over the windscreen... "That's better!" Or when seagull sh#t splattered the windscreen... "Thank Chr#st cows can't fly!". My dad worked on the Hydro Schemes as a young man, and every time we drove north out of Fort William past the line of 5 huge pipes coming down the mountainside he used to look out of the window, up at the mass of Ben Nevis, and say, "I built that!"
So, with the car packed with tents and camping gear, an array of primus stoves and bairns, as sometimes one of my pals came along, we'd set off either heading for Perth if going north, or the Yetts o' Muckart and The Sma' Glen if west. It's a long way to the Highlands from Fife at 30-45 mph and with the roads bearing little resemblance to today's, we'd arrive at our first stop for lunch after 5 hours driving, somewhere like Loch Earn or Luibnaig or around Dalwhinnie, and start thinking about a camping place 4 or 5 hours later. They knew roadside camping places all over Scotland.
As a result, the camping stories in our family are myriad... like when they left the tent to go into Inverness for groceries and found that cars were sounding their horns and flashing their lights at them in warning. My dad stopped the car to see what was wrong, to find they were towing the tent still attached by my mother's washing line. On another occasion, a storm blew up and my dad went out to tighten guy-lines after telling my sister to hold onto the tent pole. He straightened things out and went back to bed. He wakened in the morning with my sister asking if she could let go of the pole now!
I still have a photo of me, butt-naked, being chased around a tent by my mother who seems to be holding a nappy (diaper). There's another of my Auld Man with tea-towels wrapped around his head as a defence against midges, lighting a fire in the pouring rain. It was taken from the safety of the car.
My earliest memories are of camping, cooking on a campfire, sitting at the fire into the darkness and waking in the tent in the morning, playing in a field with a Highland calf, being lifted to look into a nest full of chicks, waving to passing cars and looking to see if we knew the people in them, sometimes local families, turning over a stone to find a nest of young snakes, catching "slow" worms, guddling (tickling) trout in streams, skinning rabbits, my older brother turning up near Ullapool with his mates on bicycles, a haunch of venison from a keeper at Aberfeldy, lying in the heather watching stags during rutting or salmon and sea trout in a Highland river, being taken back to the tent and my father disappearing then reappearing with a miraculous salmon which had jumped out of the river and attacked him.
There's little doubt in my mind that these yearly camping adventures marked me for the rest of my life and led me to wander the hills of Scotland and to mountains in foreign lands my parents couldn't ever have dreamt of. Much of the self confidence in the outdoors and many of the skills I've acquired over the years were absorbed during those family camping trips, as has been confirmed for me after having taken my daughter out ever since she could carry her wee rucksac with her teddy and jammies in. (Yes, I carried the bananas, oranges, apples, juice, spaghetti hoops and meatballs!)
She cast it back at me recently that she remembered me telling her to mash the midges into her mince and tatties as, "It's all protein, Hannah. Protein!"
She's now studying Environmental Sciences, goes camping with her pals at every opportunity... between Music Festivals, she's just back from Rockness, which of course involve camping!
I went camping with her about a month ago in Rothiemurchus. We got the tents up and then gathered wood for the fire, which I intended leaving for an hour or so before lighting and set about getting a brew going. My daughter had different ideas though and appeared with a handful of old-man's-beard which she proceeded to wrap in a birch-bark tube and light, placing it on top of 5 sticks and feeding with kindling. When I asked her where she learned that, a vacant look said she didn't know.
"I'm just lighting a fire, dad!", says it all, don't you think?
Soul Food! You reap what you sow!
ps; Last year, driving north from Aviemore with a mate, I stopped when I recognised a camping spot my mum and dad used to use. We got out of the car and went into the woods to have a look around. There used to be a heavy old iron grill my parents, and others, used and replaced in a hollow tree stump after use. The tree stump was gone, of course, but when I walked over to the gully where they used to set the campfire, there was the rusty old iron grill lying on the pebbles.
It took me a while to compose myself and I had to walk off to have a moment alone. So much for rough tough mountain men!