The reason for the total lack of activity here (apart from Richard and Danivon bashing their heads together in the comments) is that I have been away on holiday.

In a fit of misplaced optimism about the weather prospects we booked a week camping on the Isle of Wight and just got back yesterday. We had to stay in Crawley for the Broadfield fete but set off the very next day which turned out to be very fortunate indeed.

After a week of solid rain and misery I had nightmare visions of trying to pitch a tent in the middle of a downpour but last Sunday was not too bad at all and when we reached the campsite it was a bit damp underfoot, but not actually raining, so putting the tent up was a doddle but I was a bit worried that the ground was so damp I could just push the pegs in with my finger – how secure can it be if the ground is semi-liquid?

After that it was all downhill though. The campsite was on top of some cliffs right on the South-West coast of the island and in the middle of the week it started to get windy. Not just breezy, but 30-40mph winds. Our tent has a large dome section in the middle so we were able to cook and eat inside, but it was scary seeing the walls curving inwards instead of out. I had to make frequent tours of the perimeter checking the pegs and tightening lines.

Some of the pegs kept getting pulled out and I replaced those with my limited stock of industrial-strength huge tent pegs. The wind kept unzipping the doors and at one point snapped several of the wooden poles on the windbreak clean in half – these are poles at least 3cm across and they just snapped!

Half the tents around us got totally flattened, with metal poles broken. By mid-week the site was starting to look a bit empty as the owners of destroyed tents decided to give up, and cars were starting to get stuck in the mud.

On Friday we we found the site had suddenly filled up. It turned out that every other site on the same side of the Island was turning people away as they were too waterlogged and everyone was getting re-directed to our site.

Somehow our tent (£114 from Argos) survived the gales, which returned again on Saturday night along with more rain. By some lucky fluke Sunday morning was dry and calm so packing up the tent was a lot easier than we feared. We had not been looking forward to trying to fold an enormous tent in strong winds.

As we took it all down we found that the ground under the groundsheet had turned to mush. It was like a little section of Glastonbury or the WW1 no-mans-land under there. When we were dismantling our bedroom we actually found a frog living there!

Taking the poles out we found that 5 of the 9 poles had been shredded. These are fibreglass poles which are quite flexible, but they had been split lengthwise into 3 or 4 sections. Somehow those bits still held the whole thing together though.

In spite of all that, we actually had quite a good time. Most of the bad weather was in the late afternoons and evenings. During the day we were out visiting the various attractions and having fun. The only inconvenience was having to spend the evenings inside the tent – but at least it is big enough to do that.

Having good weather on the days of setting up and striking camp made all the difference.