So I am back from a brief trip to Cornwall with the kids.

Not a complete success it has to be said. It was third time lucky as far as camping went. I was trying one more time to see if I could make camping a fun experience for all. Well readers? It was a resounding failure so much so that my son said to me as we wandered around Newquay

"Dad" he said "Lets just admit we are not a camping family" I could not in all consciousness disagree with him. I have always found camping to be a singularly uncomfortable affair.

Too hot, too cold, uncomfortable ground, sunburn, general deprivation, poor food, cold tea. Need I go on.

We camped as a family when I was young. I hated it. As a teen I fell into it because it was cheap and easy. But uncomfortable.

I can see why people do it out of need. The need for a holiday without paying the earth for flights etc. But to do it by choice? I am afraid it was as lost to me as it was to my kids. Maybe if I had enjoyed it, it would have rubbed off on them. But I hate camping. I hated scout camps. I hated family campouts.

Never mind the personal privations you then have to share a field with a whole bunch of people who seem to believe that although the walls of their dwellings appear canvas they are in fact made of space age lightweight sound proofing and no one in this field or the next can hear a word they are saying. And then they go about saying some choice things that I then have to explain to my kids.

Yes, yes I could remonstrate with them but that would have made me the one prude in a sea of chavs. So I sucked it up for 3 days.

If we go on holiday again it will be NOT be under canvas.

My next gripe is all about Dorset. That fair county of Thomas Hardy. Where the roads have, but for a little tarmac, not changed from the 18th century. The roads dept. of Dorset County council should all be given the council revolver and asked to do the decent thing for all the tax money they have NEVER spent in the name of progress. In fact I would go as far as to say that an 18th century drover with a 100 head of belligerent and mindless sheep, with the addition of one hopeless Colly dog, would have made faster progress across that blighted county than myself in my "Trusty" Renault.

200 miles I travelled today in just a little over four and a half hours. 60 miles and two and a half hours were spent crossing the "Land that Time Forgot"

I remember a journey in 1976 taking just as long across Dorset. The only difference today is that everywhere else has built roads and Dorset has just, well, festered.

If the county were to fall off the British Isles I don't think anyone would notice or care for that matter.

Now to vent my spleen about catering at the Eden Project

Oh bother! another time