I spent last week on a camping trip staying on the beautiful North Yorkshire coast near to Whitby.  We went with my husband’s sister and her family.  Our nephews are 2 and 5 and it was quite an adventure for them as it was the first time they had ever slept under canvas.  During our preparations for our trip they had been ridiculously excited by the idea of sleeping in a tent – well they were, until E’s mum told him that there was no TV.  This was something he couldn’t comprehend.  No TV – why ever not? What possible reason could there be for no TV?  It’s a very hard thing for a five year old to comprehend that there was no electricity in a tent.  No bathroom he could understand, no kitchen he could just about cope with, but no electricity, no Ben 10 to watch; that was a step too far – his eyes started welling up with tears!

Fast-forward a few days and we were in our tent.  He got used to the fact that water had to be collected from a tap in the corner of the field, that the toilets were in a building near the farmhouse, that I cooked everything on a two ring gas cooker whilst sitting cross-legged on the ground and, perhaps even better, that there weren’t many showers so he could be covered in sand from the beach all day long!  But the lack of electricity continued to trouble him.  ‘We could go to that house over there and watch their TV’ he suggested hopefully, so we asked him how he would feel if someone turned up on his doorstep wanting to watch his TV!  We were lucky enough to be camping on a field with a play area so he spent most of his time making new friends and playing games which distracted him in the short term.  We also enjoyed the most fantastic weather which meant we spent all of our time outside going on trips to Whitby and Scarborough, playing on the beach and spending his holiday money in the toy-shop.

On Saturday we all drove home, quite a long journey which we broke up with a stop at the National Railway Museum in York as the boys love trains!  We drove more slowly on the final leg of the journey and arrived home after E and his Dad.  When we arrived home E was already sitting in his favourite chair staring at the goggle-box watching his favourite, Ben 10!