Friday 1 August 2008

Camp as a....well....campsite

"Holiday, celebrate" wittered Mockney sex-fiend Madonna 20 years ago. And she was right. Going on your holidays is a time to celebrate. It's that time again, and I strong-armed the Mrs into staying in this country again, so we went camping in North Yorkshire.

In a phrase, it was quality. I could've easily killed half a dozen people in cold blood with a rubber mallet but eventually everyone left me alone and we were cool. The tent flew up, the fold-up grill was spectacular and I went to the pub every single day I was there. That's the holiday of kings.

Interestingly, we had a celebrity aside while we were there. Returning to the site from another pub trip we noticed a Rolls Royce hooked up to a tiny caravan. As a labelled the driver 'eccentric' it dawned on us that Top Gear's finest James May was in our vicinity. We had a good old gawp as we went past but that was pretty much the end of it, save for most of the other campers trying to be the most informed about his attendance.

A few minutes later we went to the loo and en route bumped into Oz Clarke. Then the penny dropped; they were filming another series of their wine adventure. This was confirmed when I spoke to the man himself, who was massively anti-Scot and and anti-Welsh in the 60 or so seconds we chatted, but we parted on good terms and left them to it.

They filmed for a little over 24 hours then disappeared, although as the Mrs said "the shine has been taken off slightly". It is clear that filming is a drawn-out process, but this was just silly. The final cut may be different, but I reckon they will use about 10 minutes of the footage they took in their programme. They kept restaging scenes and at one stage I'm sure they faked a puncture. Time will tell but it's clear that all that on-screen chemistry is manufactured for the good of the show.

Anyway, in summary, a good time was had by both. We got a lot of reading done, went wandering and the Mrs even turned to Carlsberg when her wine ran out. If that's not slumming it, I don't know what is...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whereabouts did you camp? The parents are looking for somewhere not too far away to rest their weary Eldis- they live near Hull.

Jambience said...

Masham near Ripon. Home to the Theakstons and Black Sheep breweries. I highly recommend it.