WHAT is it about the whiff of canvas and rubber, the twang of guy ropes and the all-pervading stench of propane that makes camping such an appealing proposition?

I fished out an old tent from the back of the garage a couple of weeks ago to amuse the grandchildren for an hour or so, and ever since, they had begged, pleaded and cajoled me to let them camp out in the front garden.

The two-man tent was crammed to the fly sheet with excited children on the test run, along with a couple of excited dogs who thought their prospective new kennel was simply wonderful.

The floor was on a pronounced slope, which meant the little ones all wound up in a heap in the corner, but it did not put them off one jot.

I knew they would not last more than half an hour out of doors once darkness fell, and the noises of the night were magnified into the roaring of beasts and the rattling of ghostly chains, but part of me would have really loved to have spent the night on the lawn with
them.

The clock went back more than half a century, when my brother and I used to take the clothes horse and an old army blanket at least once during the long school holidays, and set up the “tent” under our bedroom window.

No matter how tired we were, sleep would never come, as we terrified each other with ghost stories loosely based on the noises we could hear outside, from the next door neighbour putting out his cat, to the old lady a few doors down whose thunderous volleys of broken wind sounded like Mons
Meg tolling the hours in Edinburgh.

We didn’t have a ground sheet, or sleeping bags for that matter, but just lay on a thick wad of abrasive army blankets, with a couple of coats thrown over the top to keep us warm.

We were not allowed a campfire on which to cook the cowboys’ favourite sowbelly and beans – even if we could ever find out what it was – so contented ourselves with sugar butties and whatever we could scavenge from neighbours’ gardens, whether it be a few sticks of rhubarb, a handful of gooseberries or the lone pear which graced next door’s ailing fruit tree.

From these rude beginnings grew a desire to go camping proper, and I saved up the cash from my paper round to buy a real tent around 1964.

A friend and I went hitch-hiking with it the following year, in the days before every motorist was considered a murderer, a pervert or both.

Every sliproad to every motorway used to swarm with thumb-twitching travellers, and as an impecunious youngster, I travelled the length and breadth of the country by this method, with no ill effects.

For that reason, I vowed to myself that if I ever did get a car, I would always pick up hitchhikers as a belated thank you.

While you seldom see them now, I have picked up scores over the years, and once did my bit for international relations
by going 30 miles out of my way to take a Swedish Scout to
the Hawkhirst Centre at
Kielder.

My friend and I – both 15 at the time – had no idea where we wanted to go, but resolved to see how far we could get.

We had an idea of going to London – although we had no idea where we might pitch a tent in the capital – and while we didn’t quite make it, we did make camp at Skegness, Lincoln, Nottingham and on a roundabout on the A1 at Leeds before ending up in the Lake District.

We would doubtless have been put in care if we tried such a thing now, and our parents arrested, for we only had 30 shillings between us, and no way of contacting the outside world in those pre mobile phone
days.

Mrs Hextol and I even went camping on honeymoon, and even when the children were little, we would pack the tent and hit the road, with four children and all the camping gear crammed into a Mini.

When the sun shines, I feel I could go under canvas again – but the thought of that trek across wet fields to a communal ablution block, with sinks served by temperamental geysers, makes me realise that perhaps all-inclusive trips to the Caribbean aren’t too bad after
all…