Campers choose to spend money on holidaying outdoors in nominally minimal settings whilst retaining the luxury and glamour you might find in a boutique hotel; opulent decoration, an electricity supply, comfy bedding, fairy lighting or perhaps tea-light chandeliers, mini-fridges, verandas and reliable heating. All in environments that can’t be beat; whether they are the urbane inner-city glow of your boutique hotel or the sunrise over a lake through a delicate morning’s mist.
This kind of holiday is a playful endeavour; both in the sense of its enjoyable light-heartedness and in the sense that you are making-believe your holiday is something traditionally much harder work. Ironic nods to traditional undertakings have been growing and growing in our cultural landscape. This is best summed up in the ongoing craze for combining a sort of war-time community, jollity and severity of attitude with cupcakes, knitting and other playful homely arts.
Unsurprisingly, the addition of bell tents to the camping trend rings true amongst such nostalgic hobbies. As bell tents continue to develop as part of the camping repertoire, they summon up a form of holidaying redolent of a classic, homely, war-time-like nuance glamping. Even if you were lucky enough to get out into the countryside with the Guides, Scouts, Brownies or Cubs, you may not have been lucky enough to use a bell tent. However, this old-fashioned method of sleeping outdoors is virtually written into our cultural DNA and most would jump at the chance to experience it.
Alternatively, if floral prints, aprons, canvas and pseudo-chandeliers don’t tick your boxes, perhaps a sense of the Mystic East will. For those of us more enamoured with the idea of steppes, deserts, nomadic lifestyles and the great life outdoors, a bell tent can give a sense of inhabiting a yurt with a similar mode of circular living, ease of wood-stove use and a laced-up doorway.
Finally, for those of us with a really hard-core nostalgic edge, bell tent camping can take us right back to colonial times, jungle-exploring and the Crimean war. The flap of damp canvas and the sense of keeping your upper lip nice and stiff whilst all continues around you has some serious Victorian sentiment. Some camping UK resorts even cater to this, offering ‘explorer’ themed tents.
The addition of bell tents to the array of possibility one can undertake when camping is a welcome one. For a past-time that is fundamentally one of a sweet nostalgia and make-believe, these types of tents add another facet to the glamorous camping that you and your family and friends can enjoy.
I hope you enjoyed my article on Camping and the use of bell tents in the modern camping trend of glamping.
