Dutch carry on camping after 100 years

You can recognise them anywhere in Europe: Dutch people camping with their sturdy, family-sized tents, overloaded station wagons or slow caravans. One hundred years ago, Amsterdam tent manufacturer Carl Denig started the first Dutch camping association. And his legacy lives on, especially in times of crisis, because camping is fun… and cheap.
The popularity of camping in the Netherlands is about as old as the Boy Scouts and the two have much in common. As with the Scouts, camping came from England, where Carl Denig took a tailoring course in 1910. Back then he joined an organisation now known as the Camping and Caravanning Club.
Spy
After his training, Mr Denig went camping with two friends in a homemade tent on the Isle of Wight. In those pre-World War I days, the German-born Denig was promptly arrested on suspicion of being a spy; the trio had unwittingly camped on a military training ground.
Once back in Amsterdam, Denig focused on making lightweight tents and founded the Dutch Tourist Camping Club (NTKC). In the early years, it was mostly scouts and other youth organisations packing their tents and heading off into Dutch countryside. Only in the fifties did the first families begin to go on camping holidays.
Camping Diploma
It was a development that had both the government and the motorist’s association ANWB worried. Campers were made to register and request a camping card. There were special courses for camping diplomas and passports. Prospective campers learnt that they had to introduce themselves to their neighbours when they set up camp. And, to prevent yellow spots, campers were not to put hot pans on the grass.
In the 1960s and 1970s, this camping etiquette was seriously challenged. Youth camps emerged where a cloud of hashish smoke hung between beer-crate walls. Busloads of young Dutch campers were drawn to the Spanish costas. They were not particularly interested in the natural surroundings; to them being able to sleep off your hangover in a tent was cheap.