Packing my “Local Celebrity” T-shirt ahead of a Spanish glamping adventure is, it turns out, a big mistake. Wearing it is a bigger one.
The pale-green shirt with the stupid slogan was bought a long time ago, years before a few brief TV appearances saw me scrape on to the bottom of the Z list of Ireland’s celebrity culture. Once there, I could no longer wear the T-shirt on the very off-chance someone somewhere would see me in it and think I wore the claim on my chest as a badge of honour.
In the sadness stakes, that would rival a Voice of Ireland runner-up wearing sunglasses in the VIP room of Buck Whaley’s to “hide” their “fame” or a retired footballer reliving past glories by knocking 10 goals past a group of kids having a kickabout in a park.
But it’s a nice-fitting T-shirt, comfortable and in great nick – due to its lack of wear – and I figure it will be good for a bit of overseas glamping. So on day one at the Playa Montroig campsite, just over an hour’s drive south of Barcelona and 20 minutes’ drive from the Ryanair-serviced Reus Airport, I wear it to the bakery.
As I stroll the 500m back from the shops to my ridiculously fancy caravan – of which more in a bit – I am nodded at by a fellow traveller wearing a Charlton-era Irish jersey. “You’re the guy off TV3,” he says by way of introduction. I nod as his eyes move down to my T-shirt. I try to cover the incriminating words with my baguettes but move too slowly. His lips move almost as slowly as my baguettes as he reads my chest. Then his eyes narrow. “Local celebrity, wha’? That’s a good one.” The conversation ended abruptly and I’m sure I hear him muttering the words “f***ing gobshite” as we go our separate ways.
The Montroig site is big, with more than 1,500 encampments, but even the biggest of campsites is confined, so my new friend and I keep bumping into each other in the days that follow. Every time our paths cross in one of the site’s three pools or at the nearby beach, he whispers conspiratorially to whomever he is talking to and points in my direction.
More than once I thank the glamping gods he isn’t my site neighbour. Because when you’re camping, the quality of your neighbours can make or break your holiday. And he would have broken mine. But I am lucky enough to get brilliant neighbours with brilliant children who instantly bond with mine.
It makes all the difference. It means we can spend days of unbroken summer sunshine listening to little girls whisper conspiratorially as they arrange nightly water fights and cuddly-toy fashion shows while eating an endless stream of cheap ice creams and discussing which of the eight water slides in the pool complex are the most “funnifying” – a mash-up of fun and terrifying, in case you’re wondering.
The Pope's children
The weather gods smile too. Camping in a place where sunshine is guaranteed means the Pope's children spend the majority of their days outdoors with their newly formed "girl squad" barrelling down water slides into warm pools or boogie boarding in not-so-warm waves.
With all the fresh air and the water, everyone ate and slept better, which lifted spirits as much as, if not more than, all the blue skies and sunshine in the world.
While the quality of the neighbours and the weather is important for a good holiday in the “wild”, the accommodation is the thing that can elevate a great camping experience into a glorious glamping one.
And the Aspect holiday homes offered by Eurocamp at Playa Montroig elevated the experience to an extraordinary level. The three-bedroom mini-homes are relatively new to the site and as far from the camping experiences of my youth as it is possible to get.
To call a holiday in an Aspect home camping – or even to call it glamping – would be to misrepresent the experience. The accommodation is better-proportioned and better-equipped than many homes thrown up by Irish developers when the Celtic Tiger was roaring loudest.
The homes come with dishwashers (seriously?), flatscreen tellies, air-conditioning and large decks with all sorts of comforts you would never get in the wild – or even in the most high-end Irish glampsites.
The on-site supermarket has all the fresh meat and vegetables needed for a self-contained camping experience and the fact that the Eurocamp home comes with full-size fridges and kettle barbecues means al-fresco dining is the way to go. It is just as well, because the restaurants on site are hit-and-miss.
Fun water park
With all the comforts of home on site, leaving even for a few hours is a wrench, so we confine ourselves to a couple of trips to a ridiculously fun water park, Aquopolis.
Top tip number one: entry to the water park for one day is as much as €100 for four people, but a second day costs just €20 if you buy the tickets while in the park on the first visit. Tip number two: buy a “speedy pass”: they cost just €7 a head and allow you to skip to the top of the queue for all the slides. And tip number three: the onsite restaurants are poor and expensive, so bring your own picnic. You’ll be glad you did.
While for an Irish person this type of camping experience seems super-luxurious, it is commonplace in Spain. Camping has come so far here that the Spanish don't even call this high-end option glamping. According to glampinghub.com there are 155 glampsites in Spain. Montroig isn't one of them.
It really should be, I thought to myself as I lay on an absurdly well-upholstered sun lounger shaded from glorious sunshine by a canvas awning made of actual ship sails stretched out over a sprawling wooden deck. In the “caravan” attached to the awning, the dishwasher rumbled away comfortingly, cleaning wine glasses that had until recently been filled with Rioja bought for a quarter of the price it would cost at home. ’Tis a hard old life.
