Where’s the strangest places you’ve stayed? This is mainly inspired by one of my stays (or not as it turned out) at a ‘Campsite’ however interesting wild campsites are good as well.

Proper campsite – I stayed at the campsite in Alston next to the steam railway station. To get to it you navigate through a scrapyard and the campsite is a little patch of grass between static caravans seperated from the town playing fields by a low wall (where everyone wlaks there dogs / smokes drugs in the evening). Weirder still was the shower block that was in the basement of a derelict building – to gain entry you walked through a ‘tunnel’ which was probably an old petrol tank from the petrol station above. The shower / toilet block was like something off 28DL. As I was staying on my own I freaked myself out a bit an beat a hasty retreat to the Youth Hostel.

Wild camping – as a student slept outside the Safeway in Fort William en route to Ben Nevis, and also next to the generators of the ski lift at cairngorm.

camped in las vegas a few years ago, one tiny spacepacker between 200ft long american motor homes was a little strange

Pieface – that sounds like a great opening to a horror movie!

the nicest was some auld fella’s garden in the town center on the Greek island of Paros..
quite illegal but he didn’t seem to mind putting up between 10 and 15 European backpacking barworkers all summer.. 3 generations of his family were cool with it too.. sometimes they cooked for us or plied us with booze..

He would sometimes get a bit drunk though and sentimentally try to get me to admit my Greek origins.. listing as many famous Greeks as he could to try and entice me from my supposed denial.. (the only exotic blood in my veins is either Scottish or Devonian)
Benny the Danish Hells Angel, on the run from the biker wars at home was one of my favourite residents.. or maybe 55 year old Al the hobbit with his 17 year old Swedish wife..
Or Pricey.. the Welsh fella with 7 brothers.. who’s Mam called them all Pricey.. he was the only one that could eat a whole heavy glass ashtray as a party trick though..

Good times

I bivvyed in a flower bed in a park in Australia. I arrived in the dark and thought I had found a good spot, what I didn’t realise was there was a road with no streetlights the other side of the flower bed – I woke up to see thru the bushes the feet of people going to work walking past a few feet away. to make it worse I had got undressed. My cover to get dressed and pack up was only about 2 1/2 ft high.

Arrived on a campsite in France – you know the ones where people put up a huge canvas house and live in it for a month – we had a tiny mountaineering tent – they had no pitches left as such – but there was au unused car parking space.

The flat grass next to speedwell cavern visitor centre. Too dark and tired to realise where I was (young at the time), stepped out in just my pants the next morning to give the pensioners club trip in the queue a bit if a start.

Cycling back through France one winter.

Tired and after dark I pulled off the road and got into my bivvybag.

Morning came, I looked around to see I’d slept in a graveyard.

The zombies didn’t get me.

Just up the hill from CYB, owner was an ex-plod and barking.

Site was crap too.

I rang a B&B in Winsford, Cheshire once, to book a double room for a mates wedding. Phone was answered by a somewhat camp sounding chap. Went through the motions, dates, availability etc. He then asked if my partner wanted a veggie breakfast, & I replied no, & that She was actually my Wife.
To which he replied “I’m sorry Sir, but I dont think this is the kind of place for you”, laughed & then hung up.

All cycling related:

On a patch of grass outside a US fire station “…you might get woken up if we have a call-out during the night…”

In the middle of a one of those large suburban US lawns (the family invited me to use it when I stopped to ask about places to camp, and cooked me breakfast in the morning).

In a picnic shelter on the border between Ukraine and Romania after the frontier guards refused to let me cross (later took pity on me and gave me a bed in the barracks).

Inside an Indian hotel room (mosquitos were so bad I had to climb into my bivy tent to get any sleep).

Doubt I would be the only one to do this, but I camped in one of those French Motorway lay-bys. Was woken up in the morning by the sound of walky-talkies. We got out of the tent to find we were sharing the lay-by with a convoy of tanks.

Another one – on the outskirts of Paris after a very long ride and now in the pitch dark. We saw some caravans and just put our tent up alongside. Woke up in the morning to find we were in the middle of a (squalidly filthy) travellers camp.

On the other hand….

PICT3476 by druidh_dubh, on Flickr

I stayed in an odd campsite in north Wales somewhere, they had a strange open toilet block, where there were two doors into two toilets, but nothing in between them so you could by sitting next to someone while taking a dump! They were also communal – the girls I was touring with were not happy!

Smiliar to Takiswasa2’s post above, I too phoned a BB (in Lincoln) and they said no beds available but by all means, camp up in the garden. I did just that, for two weeks. The B&B was run by two gay blokes who cooked amazing breakfasts, partied like rugby payers every night and had *ironed* clothes and bedding ready for me every afternoon. They were awesome. They knew every tasty girl in Lincoln and would encourage them all to have sex with me.

What a great pair. They kept in touch by email for about 5 years until one of them decided he was straight and they split up.

Very sad. They were a great couple and brilliant hosts. It was Lincoln so obviously without them being there I’d have topped myself.

lots of lay-bys and once in the middle of a roundabout but it was a nice bit of green ground and at a travellers camp in northern France , the smell of their goats in the morning had me gagging when the wind changed

Mainly camper van ones from my yoof:

Parked in the middle of a German woods, I kipped outside in a hammock, awoken by none too happy German police pointing guns at us and demanding passports.

Attempted to camp in the (shonky) van on the water front in Monaco, the police there laughed us out of town.

The “window bed” in the roof regularly meant waking up to the general public of Europe.

In the USA I had a perfect nights sleeep bivvying out in an Indian reserve, my morning fire led me to meet the native fire guy who informed me I’d just slept in a spot where the locals usually end up, drunk and shooting their guns. Empty cartridges were scattered everywhere.

Doh

Many moons ago four of us parked up in what looked like a bit of a car park and a river. We pitched, got very drunk and took lots of illegal chemicals. We woke the next morning to find the mayor/ head of the village wondering what the hell we were doing camping in the villages visitor center car park. There were folk everywhere going about their daily business, shopping, families walking, ect…

He was not impressed.