The Great Escape

更新：2023-11-22

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[00:01.49]Lesson 47
[00:03.71]The great escape
[00:12.53]What is one of the features of modern camping where nationality is concerned?
[00:20.21]Economy is one powerful motive for camping,
[00:23.91]since after the initial outlay upon equipment, or through hiring it,
[00:28.62]the total expense can be far less than the cost of hotels.
[00:34.23]But, contrary to a popular assumption, it is far from being the only one, or even the greatest.
[00:41.16]The man who manoeuvres carelessly into his 20 pounds' worth of space
[00:45.58]at one of Europe's myriad permanent sites may find himself bumping a Bentley.
[00:51.54]More likely, Ford Escort will be hub to hub with Renault or Mercedes,
[00:56.86]but rarely with bicycles made for two.
[01:00.50]That the equipment of modern camping becomes yearly more sophisticated
[01:04.99]is an entertaining paradox for the cynic,
[01:08.27]a brighter promise for the hopeful traveller who has sworn to get away from it all.
[01:14.38]It also provides--and some student sociologist might care to base his thesis upon the phenomenon--an escape of another kind.
[01:24.58]The modern traveller is often a man who dislikes the Splendide and the Bellavista,
[01:30.87]not because he cannot afford, or shuns their material comforts, but because he is afraid of them.
[01:37.97]Affluent he may be, but he is by no means sure what to tip the doorman or the chambermaid.
[01:44.85]Master in his own house he has little idea of when to say boo to a manager hotel.
[01:52.27]From all such fears camping releases him.
[01:55.95]Granted, a snobbery of camping itself, based upon equipment and techniques, already exists;
[02:02.87]but it is of a kind that, if he meets it, he can readily understand and deal with.
[02:09.09]There is no superior 'they' in the shape of managements and hotel hierarchies to darken his holiday days.
[02:18.02]To such motives, yet another must be added.
[02:21.96]The contemporary phenomenon of car worship is to be explained
[02:26.45]not least by the sense of independence and freedom that ownership entails.
[02:32.00]To this pleasure camping gives an exquisite refinement.
[02:36.67]From one's own front door to home or foreign hills or sands and back again, everything is to hand.
[02:44.06]Not only are the means of arriving at the holiday paradise
[02:47.64]entirely within one's own command and keeping,
[02:50.63]but the means of escape from holiday hell (if the beach proves too crowded, the local weather too inclement)
[02:57.31]are there, outside--or, as likely, part of--the tent.
[03:03.51]Idealists have objected to the practice of camping, as to the package tour,
[03:08.94]that the traveller abroad thereby denies himself the opportunity of getting to know the people of the country visited.
[03:16.98]Insularity and self-containment, it is argued, go hand in hand.
[03:22.45]The opinion does not survive experience of a popular Continental camping place.
[03:28.75]Holiday hotels tend to cater for one nationality of visitors especially, sometimes exclusively.
[03:36.34]Camping sites, by contrast, are highly cosmopolitan.
[03:40.85]Granted, a preponderance of Germans is a characteristic
[03:44.85]that seems common to most Mediterranean sites;
[03:48.24]but as yet there is no overwhelmingly specialized patronage.
[03:53.09]Notices forbidding the open-air drying of clothes,
[03:56.74]or the use of water points for car washing,
[03:59.91]or those inviting 'our camping friends' to a dance or a boat trip
[04:05.10]are printed not only in French or Italian or Spanish, but also in English, German and Dutch.
[04:12.70]At meal times the odour of sauerkraut vies with that of garlic.
[04:18.63]The Frenchman's breakfast coffee competes with the Englishman's bacon and eggs.
[04:24.46]Whether the remarkable growth of organized camping
[04:27.96]means the eventual death of the more independent kind is hard to say.
[04:33.02]Municipalities naturally want to secure the campers' site fees and other custom.
[04:38.85]Police are wary of itinerants who cannot be traced to a recognized camp boundary or to four walls.
[04:46.46]But most probably it will all depend upon campers themselves:
[04:51.18]how many heath fires they cause; how much litter they leave;
[04:55.93]in short, whether or not they wholly alienate landowners and those who live in the countryside.
[05:02.81]Only good scouting is likely to preserve the freedoms so dear to the heart of the eternal Boy Scout.