You see this tiny little beagle outside this average sized tent?
She’s small for a beagle, look how she takes up barely any room inside the tent.
Small isn’t she? So after a fun day out at the beach and a fab night out in a dog friendly pub, I didn’t think there would be any problems with our tent accommodating all of us for a cosy night’s sleep.
The illustration shows two humans in a sleeping bag on an airbed in a tent, adding one small dog in shouldn’t have been a problem…
but then this happened.
For some reason, my little dog, once she was on top of a sleeping bag, grew to the size of a woolly mammoth.
She.was. everywhere. Despite having not one but two of her doggy beds in the tent, Mary decided to plonk herself right in the middle of us and rest her head on my arm. The weight of her forced all of air out of the sleeping bag, leaving me pressed up against the zip at the side.
At one stage I tried to give myself a little more room by unzipping the side of the bag, but I had been pressed up against it with such force, that half of me fell out leaving my right side exposed to the elements. So then I turned on my side and tried to zip the sleeping bag back up again. It was something of an exertion, but I managed it, tucked my arms back in and found myself stuck in the sleeping bag on my side. I learned if I turned very slowly, I could swap between trapped on my side, to trapped on my back to trapped on my otherside.
Each position took about fifteen minutes to get into. I rotated myself around and around. For the first time in my life, I knew how it felt to be a lump of doner kebab meat. After several hours of perpetually rotating with Mary’s disapproving stares, I finally got into a semi – comfortable position. I found if I bent arms back, and tucked my knees in and bent at the hips in a 90 degree angle, I reckoned I could get to sleep.
Ahh, the peace and quiet of the countyside, getting back to nature, the great outdoors, I was nodding off … until the noisiest mother effing dawn chorus decided to put a stop to my slumbering. Seriously! What the hell is all that about? Getting up in the morning and squealing and squawking, letting every bastard in the world knowing you are awake. Like, who does that? Fecking birds are noisy buggers. And that was just the normal birds. Then the seagulls started- those lot are massive knobheads. It was five o bloody clock in the morning and it went on for AGES.
I didn’t see any point trying to go to sleep after that, so I freed myself from my nylon prison and made my way to the loo block. I was the tiredest I have ever been in my life and I couldn’t even coordinate my own body properly. My feet were dragging along and I had developed a twitch in my arm. There was a fella just a few steps ahead of me, on his way to the shower block and he turned round and looked a little startled. It was then I realised I was actually moaning out loud. Not just one moan, but a sequence of moans. First a “auuuurghhh” and then “Emummmm” and then a “psss huuuu huh” gaspy noise. And even though I realised I was doing it, I still couldn’t manage to stop. I was convinced I was going to die of “Tired” and my last words were going to be “Aruuuuooog hummum pushhhuh”
In the toilet block, once I had managed to work out which were the shower cubicles and which were the loos and attended to business, I realised my brain had turned into a doner kebab as well because I couldn’t work out where to wash my hands.
This sink had writing on it and I couldn’t fathom out what was going on there. My eyes couldn’t focus on both the writing and the operating of the tap.
Then I found another sink, but I couldn’t use that one because this sink was just for washing babies and I didn’t have babies to wash, only my hands.
I eventually came upon this sink which was just right once I had worked out how the taps worked.
When I got back to the tent, the noisy birds had quietened down a bit and Mary had moved to the bottom of the bed, so I slid back into to my nylon prison encasement, Mary snoring at my feet. She must have sensed I was comfortable at last so she decided to come and lie on top of me. ON TOP OF ME.
And THAT is how to take your dog camping.
The whole thing was a bit of a “life imitating art” scenario as our heroine Fiona in Five Go Glamping finds herself in a similar camping predicament:
“Sometimes in films, you m
ight get a scene where a person is waking up because they’re being nibbled and caressed by the romantic target of their affections. Then you see it’s a weird half-dream – they wake up alone, on their sofa, to find it is not the target of their affections who is nibbling their ear or kissing their neck, but instead it is their dog licking their face furiously, dribbling dog food scented goo all over them.
Well, this is kind of what happened to me.
But, instead of dreaming I was with the love of my life and then waking up with a dog licking my face, my subconscious decided I would dream first about a dog licking my face and then wake up to find a dog licking my face.
I was also dehydrated from one too many alcoholic ginger beers and some questionable parsnip wine and in an allegedly three-man pink polka dot monstrosity of a tent.
‘Fun-filled, witty and uplifting, Five Go Glamping is a quick read but a memorable one. It features a great combination of friendship, romance and adventure and the story builds up vividly to the extentI felt like I was theremyself, watching the madness unfold.’ – Reviewed the Book
‘Liz Tipping’s writing style was great, it was fun, flirty, great characters and kept me thoroughly entertained with some wonderful witty words and some gorgeous heartwarming moments.’ – Kraftireader
‘Believe me, if you are in a need of a book that’s going to make you laugh out loud, has style, glamour and interesting storyline – than do not look any further! Five Go Glamping is what you’re looking for!’ – On My Bookshelf
‘This is an energetic and lively story, packed full of friendship, romance, mishaps and laughs. I raced through the book and I enjoyed Liz Tipping’s style of writing, which made me want to keep on reading long after I should have been in bed!’ – Curious Ginger Cat Blog
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I enjoyed a trip to Somerset recently, staying in Kewstoke, Weston Super Mare and while there we took a trip out with Mary to the pretty village of Nunney which was a lovely place to spend a few hours. 
