"Lovely photographs of professionally styled and accessorised spaces — a four-poster bed with artfully dishevelled linen sitting on a beautiful faded rug inside an authentic Mongolian yurt — are taken at the golden hour to convey an idea of bucolic bliss.... The women are wearing expensive kaftans and beaded jewellery; the men have pastel sweaters knotted around their shoulders, like Italians. Everyone is tanned. Then there’s the reality. There is no plump, inviting bedding. There is no rug. The bed is hard. The inauthentic, not-Mongolian yurt is really gloomy and dark, what with the lack of windows or light, and it smells musty. You weren’t expecting the other glampers to be quite so close.... The men don’t look Italian: they are in bad shorts with blindingly white skin.... There is nothing wrong with normal camping. There are little family-owned campsites all over the country that really do have ocean views and wildflower meadows, fresh eggs for breakfast and locally grown vegetables for supper. If that’s not your thing, there are lovely and affordable bed-and-breakfasts in wildly scenic spots. I feel sad for B&Bs and small family hotels, nudged out of the running by so-called glamping and Airbnbs, which should really be called Airbs, as you can’t count on a fry-up."
From "Glamping fantasies fold faster than a damp yurt/A madness has gripped the middle classes. It’s still a tent in a muddy field, folks" by India Knight (London Times).
A fry-up. I learned a new term, but I think I know what it is. Ah, yes:
Somerset Maugham said that to eat well in Britain you should eat breakfast thrice daily, and perhaps he was right. We're damn good at it – bacon and eggs, the sausage sandwich, boiled egg and soldiers, kedgeree, bloody marys, eggs benedict, marmalade and toast, gegs, Marmite, all make me leave the breakfast table with a great spring in my step. But we should find the man who decided that the majority of these beautiful things were best enjoyed all on one plate and slap his pudgy wrist.
Anyway, about that glamping. It could exist. And all presentations of travel should be met with skepticism.
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Coming from the resort industry I have looked at glamping as an extreme niche product sold to upper middle class and luxury level customers- mostly bored luxury level customers who, I suspect, might do it once and never again. I never saw presentations that had anything to do with the middle class. But then I only saw luxury level versions of it presented, reviewed, or showing up in trade journals.
And, if you're a luxury level couple or family, you're used to staying at some of the finest properties in the world. Why would you stop staying at say, a suite at Amangiri instead of glamping at Camp Sarika? Same company. Same area. Different accommodations. All wonderfully overpriced.
Camping is camping and that is, or was, a middle America activity. Glamping is almost made up, by the same people who tell you to bring your dog to puppy yoga classes. It may continue as a luxury level niche product, but I don't see it as a thing for long. People do love their comfort.
And another "fry up" entwined word - tucker. This is some great Aussie slang for food that has been in constant use since the 1850s. The original meaning is of a meal, that is, something to be tucked away (in the stomach).
Surfed
You know what could really brighten up an evening in a musty, old yurt? A taxpayer funded sex worker offering companionship and non-judgemental sexual intimacy.
Glamping does exist. About 5 years ago I was hired to lead an upscale tour in Scandinavia. Top hotels in the cities and one night glamping on a private island in the Stockholm Archipelago. The large tents all had a water view and were placed on a wooden platform with plenty of windows and a HÄSTENS bed with high end beddings. The food was top end as was the wine. It was a very nice experience for me, but I wouldn't pay for it out of my own pocket.
I had never heard of the Glamping before I did that tour, but have seen it mentioned more often recently. Seems like that concept is being watered down.
I did what I suppose is glamping in New Zealand. I did it specifically to get to a dark site where I could bring the telescope. It wasn't luxury in that you were responsible for your own food but it was off the grid and was comfortable; nice bed with a good view for example. It was mid-way between camping and renting a house. You were well connected to the outdoors. Only spent a night to check it out, but if it weren't for the damn virus I'd have booked 2 weeks in the spring of 2022. It was pretty much perfect for what I was looking for.
Oh, and soldiers and eggs looks great! Thanks!
IMHO, the Whole Point of camping, is intentional discomfort; for two reasons.
1) When you get back; your regular (bed, food, life, etc) now seems Luxurious in comparison. Your bed seems soft, your food DELICIOUS, your life is Meaningful
2) As a Camp counselor laughingly told me back in summer camp...
Your mind CANNOT remember physical discomfort, by Next Year; All you will remember from camp is the fun (sure, you'll remember that you complained about the mosquitos/horse flies/heat/sunburn... But you WON'T be able to Actually remember the Physical discomfort... You'll Forget that).
I told him, that he was Crazy; and that i would NEVER sign up for camp again. The next year, i was EAGER to go again; and when i got there, and started complaining: He laughed and Laughed and LAUGHED. Camping is just like Camp (duh!)
There's even a phrase for it: Roughing It
I think Obama's crowd was glamping yesterday.
Oh, I imagine clamping is real, all right. Except I picture tents mounted on wooden platforms with metal-framed beds, comfy mattresses, and LED lanterns for light. Sort of what we had at the Boy Scout camp I attended almost sixty years ago, though we had Coleman lanterns back then and slept on air mattresses (on metal-framed beds) but in sleeping bags. Didn’t realize I was more than a half century ahead of the curve!
I don’t picture kaftans and pastel sweaters, though. More like tastefully coordinated flannel shirts from Orvis or LL Bean or Abercrombie, with not yet broken-in Timberland boots that weren’t worn before and won’t be worn again. Cargo shorts, of course. And a floppy hat. Must have a floppy hat.
If you want to glamp, set up your bed on your porch or patio. All the other comforts of home are just paces away.
I always pictured glamping as a Hemingway style safari set-up where servants erect a small community of tents with real beds, comfortable chairs, build a real toilet, service a bar and short-order kitchen. One of the tents is the dining room, another a study with books, phonograph and cuban cigars. A telescope would be nice.
Bear Camp was my only experience with something like 'glamping.' Comfortable accommodations and good food in the wilderness, but mainly bears: clamming, fishing, lazing about. Alaskan brown bears and their cubs, in large numbers. Well worth it.
https://www.greatalaska.com/alaska-bear-viewing/alaska-bear-camp
I think many kids know what a fry-up is, because that's what Aunt Marge usually has on Fridays. (This is from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)
Blogger gilbar said..."2) As a Camp counselor laughingly told me back in summer camp...
Your mind CANNOT remember physical discomfort, by Next Year; All you will remember from camp is the fun (sure, you'll remember that you complained about the mosquitos/horse flies/heat/sunburn... But you WON'T be able to Actually remember the Physical discomfort... You'll Forget that)."
This is so true! Every year when I was young I'd be slogging up a mountain under a heavy backpack, or portaging the heavy canoe between lakes, thinking "This is beautiful, but not really worth the pain." Every next year I'd be back doing it again, thinking "How could you have forgotten?"
Glamping has much in common with spending north of a million US dollars on a motor home --overpaying for a sub-optimal experience.
Hopefully they'll have some high-quality snaps taken with their Hasselblad.
Breakfast is not the only fantastic British meal. When I was alternating fortnights in Britain and Tennessee back in the 90s, every Sunday afternoon the bed and breakfast I was staying at had a carvery buffet. Roast beef, baked ham, and roast Turkey and lots of vegetables. Amazingly good. Now I will admit that the breakfasts were also amazing, but Britain has good food, every bit as good as the food I have gotten in France, just a little different.
"Your mind CANNOT remember physical discomfort, by Next Year; All you will remember from camp is the fun (sure, you'll remember that you complained about the mosquitos/horse flies/heat/sunburn... But you WON'T be able to Actually remember the Physical discomfort... You'll Forget that)"
I have vivid memories of Boy Scout camping: freezing in my tent at Table Rock, near Gastonia, N.C., when temperatures dipped below zero. Watching the rain from inside my gloomy, smelly tent. Hiking up what seemed to be a near-vertical slope, face-planting when my sneakered feet slipping, only to find at the top that we could have walked up the gentle slope down the other side. I did not find it amusing.
The best part about Camp Steere was leaving it at the end of the week.
You haven't seen glamping until you've seen an SCA couple packing "light" for a one-day event. We won't even discuss some of the larger weekend and week-long events.
If we have a brew-up with our fry-up, then we would have a proper tucker
but Britain has good food
@Tim, with respect, sir, either your definition of “good” needs work or you’ve never eaten bangers. I was in England (just that part of the UK) for a week back in ‘73. (Good Lord! That’s almost a half century ago!). Having heard about “bangers and mash” as the quintessential British meal, I had to try it. Gag! The essential ingredient in the sausage had to have been sawdust, there was no other explanation. I couldn’t easily reconcile the notion of “bangers and mash” as a sort of national dish with the miserable taste, so I tried it again the next day at a more upscale place. Same result. After that I ate at Wimpy’s every chance I got.
"for a week back in ‘73."
A lot of French and Italians have moved to the UK since then. And their Indian cuisine is excellent as well.
As far as glamping goes. I signed up for Criterion and watched the Agatha Christie movie "Ten Little Indians" and if that wasn't 'glamping' the word doesn't mean anything.
On the contrary, some dear friends of mine from Kentucky let me know they would be going to a resort here in Montana for an experience they self-deprecatingly described as "glamping", and invited us over for two days and one night. I'd never heard the term before but the meaning was pretty obvious. We went, and I'm telling you, glamping, real glamping, most definitely does exist. The level of luxury they experienced in the Montana outdoors really was almost unbelievable.
Two notes:
I don't see much reference to sanitary facilities.
There's a matter of decreasing utility in trying to improve comfort. For example, find a big pine tree which has already laid down a mattress six inches thick of pine needles. Lean back against the trunk, open a can, finish up with a large Payday, and think about women. You can do an awful lot more work than that without much improvement.
But if you spend instead of do the work, you've spent a lot of money to approach the comfort level of Motel Six.
What is the reason to do this, again? If you have a DD214, you don't have to do this, right? I mean you don't, right? They can't make you do it again, can they?
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