DATE READ: December 2010
NOTES: This book was subtitled “My family’s disastrous attempts to go camping in the 70s”. It was certainly that – never was there a more inept and ill-prepared group of campers. Each holiday they set out optimistically but were continually dogged by disaster and misfortune. The book begins off well and is quite funny for the first two chapters. But there really is not enough material to sustain the narrative for 300+ pages and it feels as if the whole thing has been padded out.
Lots of the incidents sound very implausible. I don’t think this matters – but it should have been funnier! Telling us that French people are weird is not funny…..
We camped all through the 70s and had a great time. Yes, things went wrong. Cars broke down in France and Spain, we once forgot to take our camp kitchen and our roof rack collapsed in the Pyrenees. I got gastro-enteritis in Portugal – it was 108 paces to the toilet block! But it was all great. Hope no-one is put off camping by this book!
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