VIEWS AND LOOS/USE AND LOSE

The location of campsites – lovely or convenient is one thing.
The conveniences of campsites is another entirely.
Above you see - the view - and the toilet block!
I have found the inconvenience of the loos and showers a real ordeal more than 50% of the time. They are too often badly designed, inefficient, miserable cold places left dirty by the last person to use them before you do. Okay – lets get things straight. I am a camper. I have been unable to get to the loo because there was a hippo in the way. I have ducked down just outside the tent because of the hyena noises nearby and I grew up with long drops and bucket loos at the bottom of the one acre garden. I am not shy about public loos or makeshift facilities but consistent bad design for essential functions renders a happy and more importantly a healthy life impossible.
I don’t much like the word toilet anyway as it has always seemed rather coy to me but after this trip I have to concede that it is the most universal word, most often understood, and spelt in an amazing variety of ways.
Toilet, WC, toaletty, toi toi, and so on as you wish.
The one thing that is impossible in a toilet block is a ‘toilette’ in the sense that you cleanse yourself and your hair and teeth and apply unguents and beauty treatments. There is nowhere to put your ‘toilet’ bag or towels, no mirror, no shelf, no hooks, no grab handle, nowhere to sit, nowhere to have dry clothes, no privacy and no time – there may be a queue both before and after you. To add to the experience, the convenience may be a great and inconvenient distance away. Some campers actually expect to cycle to the block. They must know half an hour ahead that their need will be urgent in half an hour. I don’t plan that far ahead – not after coffee and a glass or two of red wine!
The main thing is that I have managed and survived – I also no longer care if I don’t shower every day. I had decided that it was probably ecologically unethical anyway before I left home. A strip wash and a hand basin suffice when all else fails. There is no imperative to suffer cold or discomfort even to train ones soul for purgatory.

Some loo hand basins offer only cold water.
We have had to pay for hot water in the shower but found that the shower block was freezing anyway and no amount of paid for hot water warmed it up.
We have had showers that give a timed minute of hot or warmish water and leave you cold and wet with soap in your eyes and shampoo in your hair. We had coins that were refused, cards that didn’t work, water that was orange and smelt of iron and so on.

There have also been excellent conveniences that have been a delight to use. I hoped and expected that conveniences would be economic and ecological in their use of water. The worst were mean or wasteful. The best functioned. All that I hope for is a functioning convenience at each campsite. I keep hoping!

I reached the point where the best convenience ever was the wood-fired shower and rather smelly long drop at Grodki because it was functional in its own terms and designed for human use.

I have adapted. Sorry kids to tell you this – but I now walk across the campsite to the ‘convenience’ wearing – don’t give up on me please – a fluffy dark blue dressing gown.
You cannot dress yourself in jeans standing on one foot in cold water on a slippery floor without anything to hold on to except a swivelling tap that sprays you with colder water. After weeks of damp trouser legs I bought a Polish dressing gown and now stride across the campsite with those ‘older’ campers who don’t go to the block in pyjamas. I did plan to use my cotton kaftan and got John a cotton kurti for the purpose of reaching the ‘conveniences’. They were inadequate for the spring weather and as we both discovered – too late – they are split to the waist on each side and exposed private bits of us to the brisk winds.

Let me tell you about the good ‘conveniences’. Finland is great and provides saunas. Proper towels are essential for saunas– not microfibre.
Finland provided showerheads in every toilet and two or three in the showers. If a loo is built to Koranic standards of cleanliness it works and is great to use. Finland provides stainless steel public toilets that spray your hands with water and hot air and flush the loo when you open the door. I couldn’t work out how to lock it – apologies to the person who found that out!
Sweden had individual unisex shower cubicles, and loos, and wash cubicles. It worked better than separate blocks for men and women but left many non-Scandinavians in a state of panic. John and I saved money and presumably water, by showering together in Denmark with the same system. They also had sensibly, family rooms with every toilet facility for families. In Germany you can reserve at a cost, a family room! You realise how difficult camping is for Mums with small kids and no family rooms!

John thinks I overstate the problem. At the bottom of this there is a gender issue of course. Men don’t sit down as often in the loo and so don’t face – that’s the wrong word – don’t find the same problem as women do. In Scandinavia – loo seat cleaning fluid was an available standard and in Finland I found a urinal that could be used by a woman without sitting down. It worked.

My best public loo experience was at a fuel station in Germany. We paid .50 cents for the loo. As I stood up – the loo flushed itself and a section of the cistern extended over the loo seat, spun it round and cleaned it! I was thrilled to think I had actually started the loo experience with a clean seat! As good as home! I always make sure that I am the first to use the loo that I have just cleaned! Its purity and social hygiene isn’t it Thank you Mary Douglas!