by Flora Edmiston

Flora Edmiston invites us on a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

At age 22, I am finally able to admit I loved my caravan. As a child, I was unbelievably jealous of my friends who would go on all-inclusive holidays to various resorts while I was in a 30 square foot box with my entire family (plus dog) for weeks at a time.

I had a point. For 6-week stints I would sleep in a bunkbed with no room to roll over, only a curtain separating me from everyone else. That was probably the most personal space I ever had. There was no TV, and in 2012 we watched the Olympics on a tiny screen in the ‘games room’ on a French campsite, often the only ones cheering for Team GB. And don’t even mention the bathroom, or lack of it.

To be honest, the mountain of admin was the worst part. Arriving at a campsite after driving all day and having to put up an awning was not fun. It’s actually detached from the caravan in a storm before and we all had to get up and fix it in the dark. My personal job was refilling the freshwater barrel. Odious, but better than emptying the toilet.

You may be thinking, how do we get to fond memories from this depth? There are two key elements to this: one found on our caravan holidays to Yorkshire with circa 20 other family members, and one found on holidays to France, just the four of us, that lasted the entire summer holidays (we literally left straight from school on 17th July or whatever date it was). To be honest, both elements really centre around Ruby and I, along with all of our many cousins, being allowed to run wild from the age of five. In Yorkshire, we would go on adventures, no adults allowed. Our most popular location was one specific tree, at the edge of a field, just beyond the boundaries of the campsite. We would return late at night, covered in mud, sometimes having been chased by the farmer. Another firm favourite was taking the inflatable kayaks for a jaunt down the river and getting picked up two or three villages downstream. To be honest, this did result in some near-death experiences, but also really enhanced the lifeguarding certificate I got at swimming lessons.

France was slightly different. I felt completely detached from Britain. One time I decided not to speak to anyone from home for the entire six weeks. My poor Gran would ring and I wouldn’t even say hi. I would just read the mountains of books procured by my Dad from Oxfam specifically for this occasion. Sometimes I’d take a break to have a swim in whatever pool/lake/river was nearby or do some hula hooping. Every day we’d have baguette, cheese and pâté for lunch. I said I hated it, but I secretly felt like Heidi and loved it. One particularly memorable evening, we ate takeaway chicken and chips from the little campsite café on the banks of the small lake at sunset. TikTok would go wild for a video of this cottagecore childhood.

The lows for me were certainly different to the lows for my parents. For one, I fell ill on every single one of these trips. But I don’t really remember that too much- apart from splitting my head open, which was particularly traumatic. The highlights for them were also probably different. I know for a fact they appreciated all the châteaus we went to much more than my sister or I did. My own memory of them centres around one particular place with great ice cream- I tried cactus flavour once and it wasn’t bad at all!

Maybe the acute lack of personal space would put me off caravanning right now, but not forever. It’s kind of nice to be able to (relatively) easily scoot about France for the whole summer, even if we didn’t see our friends for almost two months and watched the original All Creatures Great and Small box set on repeat for 12 years.

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