Trailer trash

Weather forecasters were predicting apocalyptic downpours and temperatures low enough to put off even the most hardened sunbather.

I should admit to having some history with caravans and bad weather having suffered a family holiday from hell in North Wales.

Due to either a severe lack of foresight or perhaps just plain stubbornness my father pitched our rusty old tourer beside a rather fast flowing stream.

All very beautiful, but after three days of rain it burst its banks and proceeded to dislodge our caravan and wash away all our belongings.

I still have visions of my father and I stumbling around in the dark trying to secure what we could.

Suffice to say on our return home we sold the caravan and never stayed anywhere that wasn’t built to withstand the most severe weather conditions.

Thankfully our accommodation at Oakdene was luxurious and seemingly resistant to flooding. We had two bedrooms, a kitchen, lounge, shower cubicle and toilet. It was clean and very spacious. Big enough in fact for son Harvey and I to play several impromptu games of hide and seek.

Sadly the space between the caravans wasn’t quite as generous. Which brings me to my confession of occasional misanthropy.

For me the ideal holiday would involve complete isolation and silence, not being hemmed in on all sides by over exuberant holidaymakers and their offspring.

On the insistence of my wife, I did try not to succumb to these feelings of hate, but things weren’t helped by the fact that our immediate neighbours had a German Shepherd tied up outside their caravan. I say tied, but in reality he was held fast by a length of chain. I immediately told Harvey to stay as far away from the 'nice doggie' as possible.

Determined to make the best of it, we went to explore the many and varied amenities the brochure assured us would make our stay a pleasant one.

First stop was the playground which had enough to keep the kids entertained, but which was rather incongruously positioned behind the bar and next to a car park.

It seemed a missed opportunity that despite the camp’s proximity to Hurn Forest, they hadn’t thought of building an adventure playground there, perhaps even utilising the trees.

Still, Harvey had a good time hanging precariously from the top of the climbing frame, while I studied the site map and planned our woodland walk through the forest.

Now this was more like it. Peace, quiet and the smell of pine trees.

With baby Lucy safely ensconced in her papoose, and Harvey brandishing a large stick, we set off on one of the many tracks that snake through the wood.

Twenty minutes later Harvey began to complain that his legs ached and we realised we weren’t quite sure of the way back.

Tellingly, we met several other confused walkers who asked us the way out. So, not wanting to appear stupid, we pointed confidentially behind us and told them to keep bearing left (I assume they found their way out, at least I hope so).

We did too, eventually, although only after we had retraced our steps and followed the tyre tracks left by a mountain bike.

By the time we got back to the caravan the kids were exhausted, so we settled down for the night.

Harvey had a few problems with the ultra thin beds, falling out at least twice but other than that we slept well.

My fears of being kept awake by barking dogs and shrill teenagers fired up on sherbet lemons were unfounded. In fact the only sounds we heard all night was the rat-a-tat-tat of acorns falling on the roof.

We awoke early and were greeted by a reasonably warm and clear morning. Perhaps the meteorologists had been mistaken?

After buying supplies from the camp shop, we decided to try out the indoor swimming pool, complete with death defying water slide that figured rather prominently in all the advertising. Harvey could hardly contain his excitement as we made our way in, only for us to discover that the slide was closed until further notice.

No one seemed to know why; even the lifeguards shrugged their shoulders and muttered under their breath.

It took me a while to explain to Harvey that he couldn’t go on because it was broken, but he seemed satisfied in the end and we made the best of it by messing about in the pool.

Unfortunately we weren’t the only ones. In fact it appeared the whole site had the same idea. Very quickly you couldn’t move for bodies, and the closest you could get to swimming was a kind of vertical bobbing up and down in the water.

I didn’t react well to the claustrophobic sense of being smothered by half-naked torsos, so we made a run for it into the outdoor pool — which due to the rather stormy weather was empty.

It may have been cold but at least we had room to breathe.

Shaken but determined not to give in, we drove into the New Forest for a more sedate afternoon of sightseeing at Bucklers Hard, a quaint slice of seafaring history.

A museum charts the rise and fall of this shipbuilding village, and a street of cottages runs down to the waterfront.

These are mostly unchanged, with original features still in place. Walking through their crooked little rooms, you get a real sense of what life would have been like at the turn of the century.

As we drove back through the New Forest it started to rain, so we cut short our woodland adventure and went to Christchurch, where we ate fish and chips in the car and watched the rain-lashed sea through misted windows.

Back at the caravan we pondered the reassuring melancholy of English seaside towns and agreed that although Oakdene wasn’t for us, it was a friendly place and one perfectly situated for exploring the beauty of Hampshire.

As we left the next day, the heavens really did open and perhaps if I was a religious man I might think the god of caravanning had been kind to us in order to restore my faith in caravans.

He didn’t, but he went someway to erasing the memories of that dark night of the soul in North Wales.