The health benefits of spending time in the great outdoors has long since been recognised and encouraged by the Club as Kat Pearson, the Club's archivist discovered.
The Camping and Caravanning Club archive has copies of various incarnations of the Club magazines going back to the very first issue which was published in 1906. Although these have changed a lot over the years, many of them contain articles, pictures and correspondence about how campers and caravanners can keep ‘healthy’. The Camping cover from 1942 (below) shows a photo captioned Physical Fitness Exercises in Camp although the magazine doesn’t give any further instructions about carrying out this exercise routine!
A.W. Frost in a 1921 issue wrote the article Tree-Climbing as a Camping Pastime. Frost starts out by justifying the grown-up pursuit of tree climbing with the argument that ‘all sport is only highly-skilled and highly-organised child’s play.’
They then go on to detail the types of trees which might be best for a novice or a more experienced climber, before ending with the (presumably somewhat tongue-in cheek) suggestion that the hobby of climbing trees is not merely for ‘campers who are in want of some exercise when they are fed-up with eating and admiring the scenery’ but is also ‘good training for aspirants who wish to go up Mount Everest or the Monument.’
I’m not sure what the members of the Mountain Activity Section, pictured below having breakfast in Chamonix in 1936, would make of this advice.
The idea of exposure to fresh-air as being beneficial to all types of campers comes up time and time again in the Club magazines, and some suggestions are more extreme than others. An article from 1907 entitled A Contribution to the Sport of Cycle Camping, discusses the need for tents which offer ventilation without draughts and shows ‘Dr Bartholemew’s Ventilated Tent.’ See below.
By 1931 Club members had taken this much further and were attending a lecture by Mr N.F. Barford on the subject of Sun-Bathing in Camp along with a film by the Sun-Bathing Society.
Barford apparently felt that an increase in sun-bathing and air baths could combat the ‘three chief troubles of modern civilisation’ which were ‘a neglected skin, the forcing of the brain to overwork, and unsatisfied sex urge.’ It's unclear from the magazine how Club members responded to this but the article certainly gave readers food for thought!
There are a number of suggestions over the years of healthy and nutritious foods for campers, along with lots of advice on storage including a warning about the dangers of buying ‘loose milk’ from a 1965 magazine, stating 'By insisting on bottled milk or milk in a carton you are not only uphlding the law but also ensuring that the milk you are buying is 'safe' from a hygenic point of view.'
My personal culinary favourites are this advert for Horlicks (right) from 1914 which is ‘Used and Endorsed by Physical Culture Experts,’ and all of the the Carefree Camp Cooking columns from the 1970s. The one shown here from a 1973 magazine doesn’t purport to be healthy exactly but today we might have a narrower definition of salad, which I imagine wouldn’t include a ‘Hawaiian Ham Bake’!
