A few days ago the family and I embarked on a brief foray into the gypsy life. Let me clarify that. No, we didn’t all get big hoopy earrings and bandanas. We did muck about with some tambourines recently, but that’s another post (or, on second thoughts, maybe not). No, we went on a brief caravan holiday.

Caravans are great. It is living out childhood dreams of wanting to live in your cubby house. Even if you didn’t have a proper outdoors cubby house or tree house, many kids made a make-shift cubby in their lounge room by draping sheets across the backs of the chairs. These kids grew up to enjoy tent holidays. Cubby house kids like caravans.

It is interesting the snide sneering that goes on between tenters and caravanners, and vice-versa. Tenters believe that true camping can only be done under canvas. Well, perhaps not canvas these days, but some light weight space age material that breathes in the summer while keeping dry in the winter, the whole time reflecting adequate sunlight to avoid fading while still retaining appropriate levels of warmth to ensure the comfort of the occupants. Tents these days are made of materials more sophisticated than most Nike running shoes. However, the tenters still insist that caravanning is a bit of a soft option. Caravanners, in the meantime, watch tenters shivering around a small gas stove while it pours with rain, hoping they can cook their tin of baked beans before the tent catches on fire or they run out of oxygen from burning the propane stove. The caravanner observes this from the dry comfort of 4 solid walls, while their twin burner stove cooks up a steak and some potatoes they’ve just taken out of the fridge, which has kept it fresh and flavoursome. The caravanner also knows that the great outdoors is just a quick opening of the door away. I can see that both have their merits. It is very hard to pack a caravan into a backpack if you want to hike up a mountain somewhere, but I also enjoy a few creature comforts while on holiday. I believe the true root of this sly jeering and jibing is the tenters are secretly jealous of the fact that caravanners had proper cubby houses as kids, while the caravanners are the whole time suspect that maybe they’ve been gypped and didn’t have to be constantly chasing spiders and other children out of their cubby house, but could have had just as much fun with a bed sheet and the coffee table.

Personally, I had a cubby house outside made out of an old cupboard. At one stage we were fortunate enough to have a cubby house made of an old Ford Transit van. My brothers and I also, however, indulged in the occasional bed-sheet-tent construction inside. So, when it comes to camping, I ended up doing both. My family has a caravan with an annexe so have the best of both worlds; a portable house, but also a canvas bit to convince us we’re camping. That way, we get to sneer at everyone.