We know it will be crowded. We know it will be hot. We are no longer tied to school holidays. We no longer need a water-slide park, and with temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius outside, a spa hardly seems a compelling reason to make the journey either.
We travel a lot. Often further afield, preferably under our own steam. There would be plenty of alternatives.
And yet, in mid-August, we get out our little old caravan and set off. By the shortest route to the sea. To Cavallino — to Union Lido. For a few years now, the sign outside has read: “Italy’s first five-star campsite”.
Packing used to be a different undertaking. Three children came along, plus inflatable animals, several tents, a paddleboard, a portable air conditioner and many things that seemed indispensable for a two-week holiday.
These days there is less. Our greatest luxury is our two bikes. We lay them carefully on the bed in the caravan for the journey. Then we hitch it to the car.
Just under ten hours later — it always takes us just under ten hours — our life essentially consists of whatever has fitted into those few square metres, plus the awning and the pitch.
Shorts. Two gas rings. A broom.
A smaller world
Life on the campsite is smaller than life at home. Above all, in the choices it offers.
At home, you could clear out the cellar, do that long-overdue repair, sort through papers, finish something on the computer. You could work in the garden, visit someone or start one of those projects that have been sitting in your head for months. Even if you do none of it, the possibilities are there.
Waiting.
On the campsite, the questions are different. What vegetables do we need tonight? A run, yoga or a bicycle ride? Shall we have our cappuccino at Vianello in the morning and Lido 55 in the afternoon, as usual — or depart from the ritual? When shall we go to the beach?
At least we no longer have to decide where to spread our blanket. That was settled years ago.
Shall we get pizza or a chicken? Which audiobook shall I start?
These are not important questions.
And that is precisely what is good about them.
Camping does not abolish everyday chores. We shop, cook, wash up, tidy. We sweep sand and pine needles out of the awning, knowing they will be back tomorrow.
Yet this everyday life feels lighter.
One explanation is quite simple: when you go camping, you do not first have to clear things away. You arrive with the clearing already done.
Not because there is nothing lying around in the awning. You can create chaos there too. But much of what demands your attention at home, or might demand it at some point, never came along in the first place.
That still does not explain everything.
After all, you also take just a suitcase to a hotel. At a good resort, you have considerably less to look after than on a campsite. Nobody expects you to cook, wash up or sweep the floor yourself.
And yet, for us, it is not the same.
Your own world, only smaller
Perhaps part of the difference is that, when camping, you have less, but much of it is your own.
Your own bed. Your own pillow. Your own duvet. The crockery you have used at home. The coffee you like. The food you buy yourself. We love the fresh vegetables. Young beans. Courgettes you would never harvest so small at home. Some Parma ham to go with them, Sopressa con Aglio, mature Parmesan.
When we get up in the morning, we do not have to think about when breakfast is served. If we want coffee at six, that is our affair. If we only start cooking at nine in the evening, nobody cares.
There is no dress code, no wondering whether shorts and a slightly sweaty T-shirt are still acceptable. Nobody tidies the room while we are out.
We have more to take care of.
But less to fit in with.
Perhaps that is precisely the point.
Camping is not simply a holiday with less comfort. It is our own life on a smaller scale. More concentrated, though. Precisely because some things that are easy at home require more effort, your thoughts scatter less.
Outside
And much of this smaller, more concentrated life takes place outdoors.
The caravan door is open. Breakfast is outside. We read outside, cook outside, eat outside. The broom stands outside. So do the shoes.
And then there is the sea.
Always.
Just around the corner, with no houses or roads in between. Sometimes you hear it at night. Two hundred metres along the campsite paths, and you are on the beach.
Almost empty in the morning, fuller during the day.
Back from the beach, you sit outside the caravan and watch.
Someone cycles past. A child looks for a ball. Someone is pushing a caravan onto a pitch. We help. Two pitches away, someone is cooking. There is a smell of garlic.
Living outdoors here also means that much remains visible.
You see who is arriving. Who is going to the beach. Who is cooking. Who cycles past. Who has been trying for half an hour to manoeuvre a caravan between two pine trees.
The boundary between private and public is porous.
That is not all positive.
But it is part of it.
No hotel-room door
This becomes especially clear with people.
On a campsite, you can retreat. But you rarely disappear completely.
There are no hotel corridors where doors click shut and everyone behind them becomes invisible for the rest of the evening.
Neighbours walk past at breakfast. You say hello. Someone stops briefly while you are cooking. A conversation often starts with something utterly trivial and then lasts twenty minutes.
With small children, it was even more apparent.
No playdates needed arranging. Another child appeared somewhere. Then another. A ball. Ten minutes later, it was impossible to tell who belonged to whom.
Perhaps that is one of the biggest differences from many other kinds of holiday: a social space takes shape almost by itself.
And some of those chance acquaintances do not disappear again.
Playmates became holiday friends. Holiday friends became friends. Some of these people we have now been meeting for many years.
How much camping does camping need?
None of this applies only to our little caravan.
At Union Lido, we keep seeing motorhomes that cost as much as an apartment elsewhere. Converted coaches with large kitchens, air conditioning and integrated garages.
Then several people stand outside, guiding the driver centimetre by centimetre between two pine trees.
In the end, the coach stands crooked on its pitch. Sometimes less neatly than our little caravan.
The tree stays where it is. The pitch ends where it ends. Then the next one begins. Everyone takes the same path to the beach.
Even an expensive converted coach is, in the end, a camping vehicle.
The question of “real camping” does not get you very far.
The idealised picture shows a little tent somewhere in nature. A river. A campfire. Nobody in sight. Union Lido, with its water parks, restaurants, spa, supermarkets and large motorhomes, seems a long way from that.
And of course there are differences.
More falls away in a tent by a river than in a caravan on a five-star campsite. More of normal life travels in the coach than comes with us.
But the basic principle remains similar.
A limited space. A little household of your own. Much of life outdoors. Not much distance from the people next door.
The range of facilities at a campsite like Union Lido is enormous. It seems the very opposite of simple camping life.
But all of that is an addition, not the principle.
Sometimes you do not just want to sit outside the caravan in the evening. Sometimes the children prefer water slides to digging in the sand. Sometimes you want to browse a few shops. And for almost two decades, the children’s disco was simply a must.
The abundance is there. Above all, though, it lets you step out of your little world now and then.
If we do not want to cook, we get pizza or a chicken. If we want an evening cocktail and live music, we go to the beach bar.
Everyday camping life still remains compact.
A few square metres of caravan, an awning, a pitch. Our bed. Our coffee. Our rhythm.
People passing by.
The sea just beyond the paths.
Shorts. Two gas rings. A broom.
We do not go to Union Lido because there is little there.
Nor do we go because there is nothing we have to do.
Quite the opposite, really.
We cook. We wash up. We sweep. We shop. We look after our little household.
But it is our household.
Smaller than at home. More open. Outdoors. Closer to other people.
Much of what normally demands attention never came along in the first place. And whatever we occasionally miss is usually only a few steps away.
Perhaps camping is not the most comfortable way to spend a holiday.
For us, it is still one of the simplest.