Another vote for Scottish independence
We should really have expected iffy weather, going in November, but it's the only time me & the wife could get off together that year.

Driving up the M6 my car developed a slow puncture, requiring a full reinflation of the offending rear tyre every 50 or so miles and when we eventually got to Fort William, we found there was no garage open, so I had to nurse it until we got to Skye on the Monday.

We found a B&B which was nice, except for the half-mile walk up the road in the pissing rain to the nearest hotel for breakfast - the old dear who ran the B&B didn't do breakfasts off-season and contracted them out.

We went for a walk to the base of Ben Nevis, in the pissing rain, but the summit was in cloud, so we went back to the B&B and watched telly.

The B&B in Skye was run by Basil Fawlty's long lost cousin, who wore tartan trews and loudly proclaimed his Scottishness, despite exhibiting no trace of a native accent. There were no restaurants open after 6pm and the pubs didn't do food out of season, but the chippy was OK.

A trip to watch otters in the wild required a mile walk in the pissing rain to a hut where we sat for 2 hours and saw 1 otter about 500 yards out to sea.

The only plus point was the lack of midges at that time of year.
( Snappyuk gets BIGGER with free sample., Fri 15 Aug 2014, 16:15, 2 replies)

I looked out of the tent flap one morning to see the guy on the next pitch trying to squeeze his dogs into tights and high heels.
They didn't look too impressed.
( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 15:37, Reply)

Another camping tale
Camping is on the same level on the fun scale as paper cuts, bending back a fingernail, and listening to the noise made by an old dot-matrix printer for eight hours in a row.

My dad bought a tent in 1980 (I was 13) and every holiday after that was a camping holiday. They were all shit. The only non-shit holiday I can remember was when I was allowed to take my best mate along for the week when I was 15. The only reason why it wasn't sit was once we'd all settled down for the night, me and my best mate used to take turns reaching into each other's sleeping bags and (quietly) wank each other off. He had a bigger dick than me, and more pubes.

When I had a family of my own I took them with a big group of friends to Germany, for a camping trip. It was shit. It was freezing as soon as the sun left the heavens, and German youths would come and kick the tents at night. I missed getting a direct hit to the head from "das boot" by an inch one night. We stuck it three nights before we booked into a B&B.

We had one night away in a tent in Lincolnshire. That was quite nice. No, really.

Then we had three nights away in North Wales with some friends. It was cold and always raining. The tent and interior was a mud bath. When it came to packing up we couldn't be arsed to fold up the filthy tent and we chucked it in a bin instead. That was a happy moment.

Camping = shit. I would rather share a prison cell with Rolf Harris whilst dressed as Jimmy Krankie than spend another night in a tent.
(jrd, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 15:22, 4 replies)

Stuck on the cliffs
When I was 18, I went on a challenging but fun week-long hike into the Deer Creek part of the Grand Canyon. Because of misbegotten zeal to be lightweight, the food was miserable - cracked bulgar wheat flavored with curry powder. I panicked when I walked into a stinging nettle field, apparently part of an abandoned Native American plantation gone riot with weeds. I thought I was under attack by spiders. My mentor told stories of a childhood fishing trip, where he used stinging nettle as toilet paper in a pinch, and rued the day. Another mentor recalled a grueling summer hike where he had mixed honey with water in order to make an energy drink and instead created the perfect bacterial breeding fluid. Their water supply ruined, they nearly died of thirst. Some other hiking party got lost and we ended up shouting pleas of ignorance to bullhorn-bearing helicopters sent to find them. But still, there were wonders to behold, like Thunder River, a dramatic cataract shooting from a cave at the base of a thousand foot tall cliff.

Anyway, five years later, I brought two friends here, so I was the mentor now. Still, I missed the trail, and we ended up at the top of a 30 foot tall cliff that we couldn't descend. It was so tantalizing. We could see the stinging nettle field. We could hear the cataract. But on the summertime south-facing slope, we were like bugs under a magnifying glass, and were swiftly running out of water. So, we were forced to do the sensible thing, turn tail, and clamber back out of the Grand Canyon.
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 15:16, Reply)

Summer fun in the pool
During the summer holidays as a kid, my parents used to send me packing to stay with some family friends. They were a well-off couple and had a couple of kids, so as an only child, I had some company and non-imaginary friends to have some fun with.

We spent most of our days (even in the pissing rain) in their pool, it was pretty big and was salt water – which was quite a novelty. In the evenings, we’d gather around the homemade pizza oven (I’m no builder, but even at that age I could tell it’s construction was quite shoddy).

I was young so my memory isn’t full proof, but I think Al, the father, used to manage property or something along those lines and was a real go-getter with a bit of spare cash knocking about. So they even took us all to Florida one year.
(Deskbound You insignificant speck of dust, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 14:53, 5 replies)

I went camp in Scotland
Must have been something to do with all those men in skirts
( 2 Can Chunder Word to your mums, I came to prod bums, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 14:50, Reply)

Paris
Got there around 10pm, ate some chicken

Woke myself up vomiting. Spent 2 days in bed. Started feeling better. Shit my pants outside the Louvre. Went back to the hotel. Went home.

Paris is most definitely *not* the city of love.
( rofl harris, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 14:26, 1 reply)

My Mrs was brought up as a little princess.
She likes things just so, is a neat freak and lived most of her life in a very big house where everything was done for her.

So, 2 years ago, I decided it was time we relived my mispent 20's, and went camping. Borrowed some gear, me, her and the 2 kids took off for 3 days in Dorset.

You'll think I'm kidding here, and I honestly wish I was, she managed to get seasick on the blowup bed, and puked into a carrier bag at 4 in the morning.

We were home by 8am.
(username failed moderation, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 13:50, 6 replies)

I'm about to spend a week on a canal boat, with the in-laws.
Did the same, a few years ago, and was drunk out of my skull for the duration. Will have to stay sober, this time, to ensure that the kids don't drown.
Still, must be improvement on the week spent in a cramped, damp caravan in Scotland, from a couple of years back.
Will nice when Scotland gains it's independence, and my lack of a passport will prevent me ever going there, again.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 13:39, Reply)

At least yours are all memories
Whilst I was watching, my missus has roped us into going camping. Where? The in-laws huge back garden, so we can "test our new tent". Good thing we waited until the weather was on the turn, eh? Camping in the deep woods in the warm sunshine is so much less authentic than faux camping in the pissing rain. FML.
(csdaveuk, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 13:19, 3 replies)

Paris - The city of love...
was where she decided to tell me that we worked better as friends.
'worked better?!'. 'friends?!'. yeah, I was really glad I'd just paid for this holiday. Then discovered I'm not too great with man made heights, whilst half way up the eiffel tower. Then got flashed by a man wearing nothing but a sock. Then came home.
( Ya What Skiddlyboop, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 13:10, 11 replies)

Simple rule of thumb
From an early stage we've learnt:

Avoid camping.
Avoid Scotland.

And for gods sake avoid camping in Scotland!
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 13:08, 6 replies)

Week on a caravan site in Scotland
With my parents when I was about 10.

We were on a site in the middle of fucking nowhere, albeit conveniently located for driving to Edinburgh and Glasgow. The site had a bar which had country music every night and a comedian we couldn't understand, and a chip shop. I was the only kid on the site not wearing a football shirt which proclaimed my sectarian affiliation. There was also a pool but it was so ridiculously cold that when mum and I went for a swim one morning, the bloke in the caravan next to it went and woke up his whole family to come and laugh at us.

We drove to Edinburgh on the first day and parked up in the street. On opening her car door my mum stepped out of the car and stood straight in a large human turd that was sat on the pavement. It still had a bit of toilet paper stuck to it.

Not a single member of my family has ever been back to Scotland.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 11:58, 10 replies)

Grandma went senile
When I was 13 my grandad dropped dead, the result of which my Grandma came to live with us, we had to move house and everything became quite stressful at home. None the less after 6 months of this hell happiness it was decided we would have a holiday.

A boy can dream of some of the fun places we may go, but as "this might be grandmas last holiday" it was decided we'd go to Scotland and visit some of her friends from over the years. We lived just outside London and her friends would all be in their 80's.

I knew the holiday would be shit, but I caught a glimpse of just how shit within 30 seconds of sitting in the car ready for an 8 hour drive.
Grandma was clearly bothered by something, "Whats wrong now!?" asks my Mum in a less than friendly manner.
"I can't find my hat pin" say Gran.
"Well we have to go!" Yells mum.
"But I can't bear to be parted from it!" whines Grandma.

We then had a 8 hour drive most of which was to the soundtrack of Grandma muttering, whinging, crying and then any mix of those combined.

Add to that Scotland is cold, wet, full of flying midges/gnats etc and for some reason all Grandmas friends live in remote shit places with nothing to do plus the only drinks on offer that weren't tea were water or occasionally weak lemon squash.

The best part of the whole holiday was visiting one old couple who lived in a retirement complex which had something to do with that crap old soap "Crossroads", however they had a snooker table and seeing my desperate boredom the old fella left the old ladies to catch up events since the war and took me and Dad to play a game of snooker where I was allowed a can of coke and a bag of frazzles. In hindsight if thats the best bit I can remember it must have been really crap.

EDIT: Just remembered, I did see a German fall off his motorbike while attempting to read a map.
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 11:49, 3 replies)

I once spent a weekend riding your mum
6 ways from Sunday in and around the Maldives

was shit
(Moag_R_Brainbow kicks the mods dog to death out of pity, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 11:43, 2 replies)

This guy had it bad:
www.b3ta.com/questions/travel/post1939423
( $$ ✅, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 11:32, 4 replies)

Tattooed grannies
I ended up on a shit camping holiday in South Wales.

The camping part of it was fine, always enjoyed it when I was a kid and still do - though these days we posh it up with a campervan instead, less "leaky" and much more comfy.

The mistake I made in South Wales was that money was a bit tight so we had to stay in the more affordable sites, plus of course we were in Wales.

So I found myself watching the exciting events of a charity auction being run at the site, there were a whole host of prizes from the best pound shops in town and of course the grand prize - a voucher for the local tattoo shop. Yep, you could win a tattoo - classy.

The event was an assortment of plastic chairs and small stalls with your typical rubbish attempt at a DJ using a karaoke machine for a microphone and a home stereo - think worlds worst school fete.

I watched as the crowd seemed to consist of grannies with skin like an old leather arm chair and overweight bare chested men already covered in tattoos and sufficiently smashed on Stella that they couldn't really stand or raise an arm to bid in the auction anyway.

So it came about that the auctioneer come DJ was desperately trying to drum up some bids from the canny eyed grannies, most of whom sat on mobility scooters despite "fat" not being a disability worthy of such transport. The bidding was slow, £2... £4.... £6.... eventually plateauing off around the £15 mark.

Faced with this terrible lack of enthusiasm the auctioneer bellows into his argos microphone "Oh come on! It's got a £60 value!!!". It was like someone lit a fire under the grannies feet, how could they let such a bargain get away!? No way Mavis would scoop that bargain of the century thought Betty as a flurry of bids were made.

I watched open mouthed as the biddies (lol, see what I did there?) sought to out do one another and the bid climbed and climbed, as if by magic the hallowed grail of a £60 value must have been in their minds as the price tailed off and it sold for £58.

I cannot imagine the thought process that goes on to inspire someone to bid £58 for a £60 tattoo voucher which must be used in the one and only tattoo shop by a shitty Welsh camp site - for all they knew the tattooist could be cross eyed with 6 fingers on one hand and thalidomide arm the other - but hey, they saved £2 eh!?

By teatime the undercooked sausages from their fast food stall had given me the shits. All in all it really put me off Wales and I've made a good job of avoiding the place since. Must be why they charge on the bridge to go into Wales as they know you'd tell them to fuck off on the way out.
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 11:30, 1 reply)

Hello my name is Jacob dyer. I sound like barnaby bear. I like barnaby bear. I live in Bristol. It is fantastic. One time I went to France. Some kid burned my neck. I didn't like it.

(Your name: Board Sig:, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 11:23, Reply)

Camping in Scotland
words can't really convey the hell that is the midges up there. Whether or not it was simply a really bad year, their presence seemed like a pretty major distraction to an otherwise truly beautiful country. And if they don't erode your will to live, the ticks will.
( Harpago ¯\(°_o)/¯, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 11:17, 3 replies)

I went to Mallorca one year and there was a thunderstorm which flooded the local sewerage system and turned the whole bay brown with excrement. That the sort of thing you're after?

( 2 Can Chunder Word to your mums, I came to prod bums, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 11:14, 8 replies)

It'll be three weeks of camping near the coast I was told...
Back in the mid 80's my dad took a job catering for a charity that worked with under-privileged kids from the inner cities, giving them a countryside holiday they would otherwise never experience. The gig was for him to spend three weeks cooking for the kids at a camp site close to Bognor Regis.

I was 10 years old at the time and was pretty excited when Dad suggested I come along for the stint. We would camp at the site, and I could take part in the daily events with the other kids.

The first sign that this would be a holiday to forget was when we first pulled up in a barren field in our Ford Capri, and opened the door to be greeted by the most acrid smell of shit imaginable. Locating the source of the odour was fairly simple, it was coming from the sewage pumping station in the adjacent field. It was a smell that I would acclimatise to remarkably quickly.

The kids started arriving later that day, and my excitement evaporated when I realised that each and every one of them was likely to beat me to a pulp at the first available opportunity. I retreated sharply to the kitchens where dad was working, and rarely ventured out for the next three weeks. Rather than fishing and playing ball-games all day as I had hoped, my time was spent peeling potatoes, removing thousands of earwigs from the kitchen floor and doing my best to avoid having to use the toilet at the same time as any of over one hundred other boys.

My lingering memory of that hellish time though is spending hour after hour in that hot kitchen, with nothing for company other than a tiny radio that was only able to pick up the local commercial radio station. I don't know who compiled the playlist for that station, but they were certainly a bit partial to the Eurythmics. I feel scared whenever I hear "There must be an angel".
(BinDipper, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 11:11, Reply)

fifth
When I'd just finished fifth form I got me hopes up when me mam said that I was going "to Rome" for the summer holidays. That's right - "roam around Keighley", she added.
( buffet_the_appetite_slayer ٩(●̮̃•)۶ jacked in to the ICE on, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 11:04, 1 reply)

I thought I'd go to Brunei for something a bit different.
There was not a drop of booze in the entire country.
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 10:56, 1 reply)

I got whooping cough in Abersoch in 1977
Everything's been ace since then.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 10:44, Reply)

The word shit and bang - first post

( d.r._and_quinch when will you be famous?, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 10:38, 2 replies)

My holiday was ruined when Scaryduck mis-spelled my name.

( Zuowan, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 10:38, 2 replies)

first
i've never really had a shit holiday. so i'll go with the duke of edinburgh camping trips that we had to do, because my friend persuaded me that "regular detentions for wearing eyeliner and skiving sports for the whole of sixth form" wouldn't look great on the extra-curricular sections of our ucas forms.

it was fucking horrific. slogging heavy rucksacks around, walking in 20 mile circles in a bloody april snowstorm when the straight road would have taken 1 mile, pitching our tent in a field full of stones on an incline, with a cow giving birth in the next field and bellowing all night. my friend needing a shit in the worst way possible and having to walk for 8 more miles because there wasn't a single toilet anywhere in the peak district. when we reached a pub and it was closed, she actually cried.

i got bollocked because we had to bring 10 chocolate bars for emergency energy rations, and my mum bought me those 100 calorie halo bars. then i got bollocked again because we ate them all.

my friend smoked a cigarette in the tent, dropped it on a plastic plate, and we were one bottle of cola away from going up in a miserable camping inferno. except that the fucking thing was probably too wet to ignite anyway. then she "got lost" in her sleep and ended up sprawled on top of me, trying to push me through the cold clammy tent wall.

the tent was small, cramped, smelly, and cold, it was uncomfortable, everything was wet and full of spiders in the morning. and yet people who aren't doing d of e do this for fun? why? how?
( rachelswipe with a fork, Fri 15 Aug 2014, 10:35, 45 replies)