Camping it up on holiday

1 Tents are mobile

And that's not the case with Ibiza, which remains stubbornly situated in the Mediterranean Sea.

Let's be clear, the party island is never going to float any closer to Brazil, no matter how hard you shove it.

But a tent?

You can erect it anywhere in the UK.

Which is pretty handy, because wherever you set up camp, you'll want to leave immediately.

Scotland? Run, before you're knifed!

The Lake District? Scram, before you're accosted by a crazed sheep farmer, who proceeds to batter you to death with a bumper edition of the complete works of Beatrix Potter!

Wales? Vamoose before those crazy local varmints start strumming their harps at you!

And don't think you'll get any respite on Britain's sloppy seasides.

When Churchill said: "We shall fight them on the beaches," he didn't mean the Nazis.

He was talking about the virulent local strains of bacteria.

2 A tent brings you closer to nature

Once, man was a hunter-gatherer.

He plucked stuff from trees. He killed stuff. He even stuffed stuff, like the odd Woolly Mammoth, which he'd display over the fireplace, or use as a draft excluder in his bachelor cave.

But now man is soft.

He isn't a homo sapien.

He's a homo sap, who plays computer games, or watches Big Brother, while balancing a bowl of cheesy nachos on the rippling crest of his belly.

However, heading out into the great beyond with a tent will enable homosap to reacquaint himself with his primal origins.

In a tent, he'll be at one with nature again, allowing him to stand proud! And puff out his hairy chest!

Then order the wife to bash in some tent pegs.

And pitch the tent. And heat the camp fire. And cook some beans. And shake down the sleeping bags.

3. Unlike a posh jaunt abroad, a camping holiday is cheap as chips

In fact, it's cheaper than chips.

Especially those hand-cut numbers they sell in swanky restaurants.

You know, the ones that arrive in a symmetrical little pile. Or grouped like a bonsai version of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

But I digress.

The best thing about a camping holiday is that it will only cost you the price of a reasonably priced tent (£35); a couple of sleeping bags (£15 x 2); and of course, a full tank of petrol for the drive (£1 million).

Hmmm.

Not so cheap, after all.

Still, there is a solution; why not camp out in the garden and wake up to the majestic spectacle of a gang of garden gnomes, a crazy-paving path and a splendid trellis fence?

Now that's what I call exotic scenery at an affordable price!