Get away from it all

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Who invented the camping holiday? Would it have been about the same time someone looked around, realised they had it all and decided they needed to get away from it? I can't imagine it would have been during the Dark Ages.

Not proper camping anyway. If your average serf had wanted to go somewhere without power, decent toilets or a comfortable bed, he'd have just stayed home. Checking you'd packed all the tent poles probably became a serious recreational issue after Edison's light bulb showed up. Or sometime around the invention of a convenient form of transportation, especially one with a boot and the ability to form into long, stationary queues.

Anyway, someone must have invented the camping trip - and by this I mean a voluntary, ascetic retreat formerly associated with smelly, bearded, pole-sitting hippies and escaped convicts. Except for fun.

Whoever it was, they wouldn't have noticed any major differences until ... well, let's say the 80s. Because that's when things started to get fancy and confused. For years, going camping was about keeping a sheet of canvas and a few inevitable sticky-taped holes between you and nature.

The layout was fairly standard - boxes of food teetering in one corner, piles of clothes in another and sleeping bags laid out around the centre pole. Which was fine, unless it rained or someone kicked the pole down in their sleep.

In the case of the former, everything had to be piled into the middle, with threats of death issued to anyone who as much as looked at the sodden tent walls. Somehow you always got wet anyway.

As for the latter, once the giggling had subsided the fix was fairly simple, along with a supplementary clip round the ear to make sure it didn't happen again. When it came to improvements, the only serious advances in the last 300 years have been swingball, the tear-top beer can and the barbecue apron that made dad look like he was wearing a bikini.

Otherwise, we were little more than cavemen, women and children enjoying a break from our one black and white television channel, the dial phone with its untangleable cord, and Little Toot on the wireless of a Sunday.

To make up for these losses we carried a variety of balls, bats, rash-inducing flutterboards, and mercurochrome, a universal remedy that gradually turned kids purple as they accumulated fresh scabs. And yet it all seemed like great fun. I guess we didn't know any better.

Much like using coconut oil as sunscreen and building homes without eaves. How did it all go so wrong?

Camping 2.0 isn't even even a pale reflection of its former boot-campness. No one's getting away from anything anymore.

In fact, I'd say people take more stuff with them than they'd ever need for a day of relaxation at home. I'm about to go camping myself and, for some reason, this trip has entailed the packing of several boxes of flashing solar-powered thingies.

Perhaps the idea is to blind the bugs. As for the tent ... when did they start needing around a dozen different bags of stuff?

Unless I've missed something they still only involve a cover of some kind, a few poles and pegs. So I'm a little afraid to ask what all the other stuff is for in case I discover I don't know how to put one up anymore.

Then I came across a newfangled solar tent, which for some reason is being developed by a British telecommunications company. I'd say this model comes with bells and whistles, but it doesn't. Bells and whistles are just standard these days.

What the hell are you supposed to make of something made from "semi-photovoltaic" fabric containing solar thread? Sounds more like a microwave. Or a spangly cossie on Dancing With the Stars. They also come with built-in pouches to keep all your iWotsits in. The pouches even create their own magnetic fields to recharge all your toys as you sleep.

Maybe they give you a tan at the same time? Assuming you can get any sleep - the solar wool or whatever it is also pumps heat down into the floor. Do these people have any understanding of what summer means? The fun doesn't stop there. If you somehow get lost while touring your campsite, you can give your tent a quick call on your phone and it'll glow for you. I'm starting to realise how my gran felt when she was handed a mobile phone.

We knew where we were at when faced with a canvas shelter: we were miserable, but with a brave face. I'd even offer a little love to the flimsy second generation tents - the ones that had a front room and windows stitched into them so that when people peeked inside you looked less like refugees.

Not that I'm too concerned over this descent into softness, it'll never catch on. Who goes tenting any more? From what we're hearing, camping grounds are on their last legs.

Instead, we've turned the manner in which we once got to such places into the whole point of the exercise. Holiday season is now a national merry-go-round of campervans and caravans. You see, whereas we used to flock to communal campsites, squeezing in between God-knows-who and then getting to know them by tripping over each other's guy ropes, we now charge off to anywhere we fancy in the comfort of a penthouse suite on wheels. It's called free camping.

Officially this means you can travel free as a bird without having to worry about hooking up to a power supply every night. Don't believe the hype. What all this gadding about in the sticks really means is that people are pooing in places they shouldn't. And that's not right. Ever.

So, I've been doing some research into what are being touted as the caravans of the future and have found that they seem to come in two flavours; retro and unrecognisable.

They might feature attractive options such exploding walls, bidets, detachable cars, and multipurpose configurations, but none comes with its own sewage treatment plant. Where's the Green Party on this, I wonder?

We need a campaign to get camping back to its roots. It's time to stop treating it like a holiday and remember the generations of communal suffering that once bonded us as a nation.

But, um, good luck with that. I'll catch you up next time round, what with my bad back and delicate disposition I think I might stick with the airbed and fancy tent for a while longer.