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It’s murder on the campsite. But it needn’t be with World First.
Down but not out. Camping is fun, but not without its dangers…
Have you got plans to go camping this year? You will not be alone. Camping is really popular at the moment, with the Great British Tourism Survey revealing that us Brits took 13.3m camping and caravanning trips in 2014. Another stat, this time from the European Caravan Federation, stated that UK registrations of new motorhomes rose by 10.6% in the 2015 season. So things really are on the up for the humble camping holiday.
Going abroad to camp is still as popular as ever, with 61% of Brits preferring France for their foreign camping adventure (according to Go Outdoors). There is good reason for this. France is one of the best set up countries in the world for camping, with all kinds of ways of enjoying life under canvas. You can stay on large corporate sites with pools and bars and restaurants, save money and stay on municipal campsites that are operated by almost every municipality, get a taste of the real France by staying in your campervan – for free – on one of the thousands of France Passion sites or stay on aires de camping car, which are specially provided places for motorhomes. Then again, if that wasn’t to your taste you can stay on ‘au naturel’ sites or ‘a la ferme’, both of which offer a chance to get away from the big business of camping.
However, the campsite isn’t always the safest of places. There are guy ropes to trip over, fires to get burned by, axes to skim shins and bugs to bite. And we’re pretty sure that most of us have, at some time or another, done something stupid on a campsite. Isn’t that right?
As if to prove a point we asked World First writer Martin if he’d ever hurt himself on a camping trip. Little did we know that we’d hit such a rich vein of stories! Enjoy the following that he freely admitted to on his blog, but don’t forget that our travel insurance policies will cover you for all kinds of mishaps, accidents, problems and issues you might come across along the way. As well as the camping related injuries, our cover will also cover you if you have to come home because of an injury, if your belongings go missing or if you have to cancel a ferry or campsite booking because of unforeseen circumstances.
You can get a quote here, but, in the meantime, enjoy a little campsite shadenfreude (and don’t let it happen to you…)
“I was chopping wood to put on the fire. The piece of wood I was chopping bounced into the air and hit me square on the nose very hard. It hurt. My teeth felt like they were about to fall out and my septum felt as if it had been crushed by an elephant. No break, just a loss of dignity and some big LOLs from my twitter followers.”
“We had a broken windscreen on a campervan trip to France. It was an old camper so it shattered. And that meant we had to be towed to a garage to get a new one. It took 3 days to arrive so we were effectively, homeless, until it could be fixed. Our travel cover paid for a hotel while we were waiting. The Mrs was quite pleased! Secretly, of course.”
“I got up one night to go to the loo and, on closing the sliding door on the camper van, hit my head on the corner of a cupboard and made a deep cut between my eyes. I went back to sleep but took myself off to A and E the next morning when I saw how bad it was.”
“During a tour of France and Spain I caught myself in the face with a fish hook whilst showing my daughter how to cast. The line had snagged and it popped back at me and embedded its barb just below my left ear. It had to be removed in hospital and I had to beg a Spanish fisherman to take me there. To his credit he waited for me and took me back to the camp site. Luckily I had my EHIC card, which got me free treatment. I was the only thing I caught that trip.”
“I have forgotten the number of times camping trips with my family have been ruined by bites from insects. One of my earliest memories of camping is of my mum going to A&E in Devon with a lump on her arm the size of a tennis ball. She had been bitten by a horse fly. I’m not immune to the odd bite but I’m not going to make a song and dance about it like my dear old mum did. I think she would have preferred to stay in a hotel.”
“Ages ago I went surfing while on a camping trip. The surf was huge and I came ashore unscathed, which was a miracle, but then I went and fell over on the beach and broke and dislocated my big toe. That was another trip to see the nice people at A and E.”
“The top prize for camping holiday incidents belongs not to me but to my lovely daughter Maggie, who fell off a climbing frame and broke her arm within an hour of arriving at Eoropie on the isle of Lewis in 2011. It had taken us a week to get there. All I can say is that the A&E department in Stornoway is lovely.”
Going camping? Take a first aid kit and make sure you have really good travel insurance.
It’s murder on the campsite. But it needn’t be with World First. | World First Travel Insurance Blog