I watched one of those old British movies the other night, ‘Carry on Camping’. Although that’s obviously a play on words too, it did remind me of years gone by when I used to go camping. It was all cold water and very basic amenities then and it got me wondering what it would be like to go camping now. Are there specific gay campsites around the world? Where do I start if I wanted to go on a gay camping holiday? As usual when I don’t know what to do I started with a search engine search.

Having entered ‘Gay Camping’ as my keywords I viewed the list and found the majority of the sites on the first page to be USA based. That’s fine, I thought, and we’ll come to the USA specifically in part two of this investigation. I tried ‘Gay Camping Worldwide’ instead. The site that caught my eye first was gayoutdoors.org. This site had lists of articles, travel opportunities, links and blogs all to do with exploring the Great Outdoors. It also had a search engine which, when I entered ‘camping’, took me to several articles on the subject. There were links to nude camps, adventure holidays, free events and much more including general camping safety and advice.

After some more searching I came across gaycampers.com which has to be one of the best sites for any gay guys or gals interesting in camping and the outdoor life. They list sites and activities not only in the USA and Canada but also Europe, the Caribbean and down under in Australia. I checked out their list of camping grounds in various countries and found them not only up to date and informative but they also came with other sensible links attached – like to the weather and other travel tips.

But what can you expect when you get to a camping ground? Obviously that’s going to depend on where it is and maybe even what country you are in. I spent some time looking at photos, not only those provided by a camp site on its own website (which are going to make everything look lovely) but also real pics from real people. It seems that the days of cold showers and holes in the ground have gone. (I am sure you can find places like that if you really want to but sometimes it’s nice to have a bit of luxury with your fresh air.) Just about all of the sites I saw had decent amenities; there were good washrooms, clean toilet bocks, some had restaurants most had shops and there were other activities too – with tennis courts and bike hire. Many of the gay ones had events, like naked weekends, or nudist weeks, but there was not too much of an accent on sex. Just because a camp site is Gay doesn’t mean it’s a sex club!

If you are looking for spicy camping – by which I mean nude camping – then you should take a look at: nakedplanet.org which has a list of gay nudist websites that are worldwide based. This is a great resource if you’re into getting naked and joining in activities, including camping and exploring. The emphasis here is on being naked but that seems to go hand in hand with swimming, camping out, living under canvas and just being with a group of other gay folk in the woods.

I think the bottom line is that it’s universal. You don’t have to be in the USA to find lots of gay camping places, or nudist camp sites. You can find them in England (if you want to be cold and wet in the summer) and other parts of Europe and the ‘westernised’ world too. There are plenty of places right across the globe advertising their gay or gay friendly campsites – nude or otherwise. Simply decide where you want to go and add that into your search and you’ll be under canvas with other gay folk before you can say ‘can you pass the billy-can Billy…’