Julie's Boggle

I think most people who know us well would accurately peg us as “not camping people”. It’s not that we don’t like cooking for ourselves, but we do like our amenities to be close at hand – en suite preferably.

So this makes our next holiday a particularly unusual one for us in that we (as in all three of us) are going to be spending a week in – well, okay, let’s say it: in a Caravan.

The caravan I should hasten to add, is the more luxurious of the options we had available for this trip. Option B was a tent.

But to more fully cover the circumstances of this holiday, I need to explain that this year we are going to a New Wine conference. And if you haven’t heard of that before, it’s a Christian conference, hugely popular, and held every year (in the UK at any rate) in a massive show-ground.

Its popularity has increased so much that in the UK they now hold three conferences a year and we, along with a substantial portion of our church, and I-don’t-know-how-many thousands of others, are going to the one for “London and South East”.

To be fair, we could have stayed at a B&B outside of the show-ground, but we felt that we would really lose out on a lot of socialising if we did that. The camp site gets laid out so that everyone from the same church camps in a “village” together, which is pretty cool because it’s basically like going camping with all your friends at once.

Not that we know what it’s like to go camping, but I reckon this has to be the easiest way of doing it if one must, because the caravan company brings the caravan to the camp-site for you, plugs it in etc. in advance, and then takes it away at the end. (We could have done this with a tent too, but felt that might be stepping a little too far outside our comfort zone. )

Apparently it can be rather muddy and grim if it rains all week, so here’s hoping for clear skies for the week after next!

Why this conference I hear you ask? Well, we’ve obviously been hearing stories from New Wine veterans for years now and, we decided last year, the time seemed about right to be brave and try it for ourselves.

And Jon? He’s part of the plan. The caravan we picked (4-berth) is apparently big enough to fit his travel cot. He’s also signed up for the babies group “Gems” which gives us 1.5 hours of crèche service a day — a bit of a breather for Tom and me to take in a seminar or two together.

All sorts of interesting questions are popping up. Like what’s the best food to take with us? How do people generally bath babies on a caravan trip? Will the kitchen equipment supplied be big enough to make a meal for 8 when we prepare our shared supper?

But all these are among the many things to ponder during this week’s packing brainstorm. Sounds like it’ll be fun.