THE WALLABY TRACK WITH LIONEL MUSSELL

For one holiday we – Mum , Dad , my friend Ken and I – decided to go camping to North Wales . As by now I had a 500cc AJS , I elected to buy a large box sidecar and carry the tents and all our camping gear .

In those days you could camp on most farms , providing you asked the farmer first . We set-up our two tents in a field on our first night . We then made our second mistake – the first having been to ignore the young heifers in the same field – and went to do some sightseeing .

We had borrowed one tent and when we returned we found , to our horror , that ‘ Betty ’ – a very frisky bovine indeed – had wrecked the tent Ken and I were to share . We didn ’ t have a good sleep under the borrowed tarpaulin slung on a rope between two trees , because our third mistake had been not realising that goods trains shunted all night long on the line at the bottom of the field .

Tired and dispirited , the next morning we forked out for a new tent , knowing that when we returned home we had to give it to the owner of the tent we had borrowed . I have never been keen on tents ever since that time but Murphy had worse in store for us before the trip was over .

Dad beat him though ! We had no such luxuries as airbeds or even camp stretchers . We just laid our blankets on a waterproof ground sheet . Mum , being a restless sleeper , tossed and turned all night and constantly pulled the blankets off Dad and , as it was quite chilly at night , he complained bitterly until he solved the problem by driving spare tent pegs in to anchor the blanket to his side of the ‘ bed ’!

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