Interesting news from the quagmire. Sales of tents and camping equipment are up by 40% as the credit crunch bites and families appear to ditch their annual pilgrimage to the Mediterranean.

According to tenting enthusiasts, a fortnight in Mallorca costs a family of four about £3,000, whereas they can spend two weeks under canvas in Devon for as little as £500.

I don’t doubt this is true. But I’m not sure the comparison is relevant, because they aren’t really comparing like with like. Arguing that a holiday in Mallorca is more expensive than a holiday in a field full of cow dung is the same as arguing that a Rolls-Royce Phantom is more expensive than hitchhiking.

Tenting works well when you are in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban, but I find it extraordinary that a family should say: “Well. Things are tight. So let’s spend our holiday this year soggy and quarrelling in a room none of us can stand up in properly.”

If you are that hard up, and you are so desperate for a change, then why not simply stay at home and cut your legs off?

It’s claimed by medical experts that we cannot remember pain, but that isn’t true, because 40 years ago my parents took me on a tenting holiday on the west coast of France, and I remember every little detail of it – so much detail that sometimes it makes me cry.

I remember the rain, and the way it cascaded down into the hollow where our tent was built. I remember the wind that knocked it down. I remember the Germans laughing at us. I remember the hateful food – mustard-encrusted salmonella entombed in the pungent aroma of Calor gas.

I remember the soggy sleeping bags, the sloping floor, the stones that dug into my back, the lack of sleep, the arguments, the discomfort, the pain, the misery, the mosquitoes, the desperation, the homesickness and my poor little sister’s confused face asking: “Why have our parents done this to us?”

At home we had headroom and walls. We had space. And when we wanted to go to the lavatory, we didn’t have to tiptoe through the ooze to a filthy shower block full of yet more Germans with faulty bomb-aiming equipment. I can see them now if I close my eyes. All those massive Germanic turds; some not even close to the centre of the 101 bogs they had in France in those days.

I don’t doubt for a moment that it hadn’t cost very much money, but even today I cannot work out why it cost anything at all. Nor can I work out why a fortnight’s holiday under canvas today could possibly cost £500. Killing yourself would be so much cheaper and more pleasant.

In every single walk of life technology has made things easier since the 1960s. We have dishwashers, computers and oven-cleaners that wipe away grime in a flash. So you might imagine tenting had come on in leaps and bounds as well.

It hasn’t. As I discovered on my trip to the North Pole, it’s still an impenetrable maze of zippers, flaps, straps, exploding cookers and tent pegs that have the structural rigidity of overboiled pasta. Oh, and the skin of the modern tent is still exactly one inch smaller than the frame over which it must be stretched. This means that when you finally get it up you will have no fingernails, no wife, no children, no voice and not a shred of dignity either.

And where will you be? In a wood? Then you won’t sleep because every noise at night, among the trees, is Freddy Krueger. In a field? Nope. You will wake up dead with a cow on your head. On a campsite? Ha. Well, then you’ve really had it because women, and I have no clue why, think tenting is erotic. Which means you’re going to have to spend the night listening to a hundred wizened ramblers bouncing around on the only pole in all of tenting that’s still upright.

Naturally, this brings me to the Ford Cortina. This too came from a time when Mallorca was an impossible dream. When film makers could be guaranteed a box office smash if they could only persuade Barbara Windsor’s bra to ping off. With hilarious consequences. We know it now as the Swinging Sixties, but unless you were on Carnaby Street, with a Moke, and you were intimately friendly with Twiggy, they weren’t swinging at all. They were crap.

No, really. I bet it was a hoot in northern California in the summer of ’68. But I wasn’t on the corner of Haight and Ashbury. I was picking my way through a puddle of German urine on a campsite in the rain. If you were going to San Francisco, you would have been wise to wear some flowers in your hair. If you were on your way to a camping holiday in the family Cortina, you’d have been better off with some wellies.

The Cortina was Britain’s most popular car back then because there was no choice. You couldn’t buy an Austin because it wouldn’t work, and Japan hadn’t been invented. It was Carry On Camping with windscreen wipers. Four seats and a boot. British Rail tea.

Today, however, there is simply no need to buy a modern-day Cortina, because Terry’s dead, June’s in Ab Fab, Mallorca’s only two hours away and British Rail, or whatever it’s called these days, can rustle up a skinny latte instead. That’s why you’ve got an MX-5. Or a RAV4. Or a Prius.

The thing is, though, that somewhere deep down inside us is a fear that all this choice is frightfully unBritish. That we’re not really cut out for being tall poppies. That we should be washing our clothes in a mangle. That’s why tenting’s made a comeback. And it’s why we all still have a secret soft spot for the family Ford. You might imagine that if you traced the Cortina’s bloodline, you’d end up with the Mondeo, but that’s not so. Today the modern family likes a high driving position and four-wheel drive, which means that actually today’s 1.6 Deluxe is the Ford Kuga.

Ooh, it’s a good-looking thing: nicely proportioned with just the right amount of styling trinketry. It’s good underneath too, with independent rear suspension like you get on a Focus.

However, it has none of the things you might normally associate with a four-wheel-drive vehicle. There is no hill descent control, no low-range gearbox, no little button to lock the centre differential. It’s almost as though Ford is embarrassed that it has four-wheel drive at all. Perhaps, in these mad eco times, that’s sensible.

Instead, Ford makes a great deal of noise about what a small amount of carbon dioxide the Kuga produces. I guess that’s more important these days than an ability to climb every mountain and ford every stream.

It’s well thought out in other ways too. There are two boot doors, easy-to-fold back seats, a good, solid feel to the interior and an impressive ride. Unlike most high-riding cars, this one neither rolls nor bounces. If you have a Subaru Forester or a Honda CR-V, you’d be amazed at how much better the Kuga feels.

Except for one thing. Ford has a habit of fitting its cars with ridiculously hard seats and in the Kuga it’s gone mad. I’ve sat on comfier kitchen chairs. Actually I’ve sat on comfier spikes.

When it comes to beds, I appreciate that some people like the firmer feel, but in a car, no one does. Unless, of course, they are used to camping, in which case anything with a roof and a heater and chairs – no matter how back-breakingly solid they may be – is going to feel fine.

More than fine, because the model I tested had a neither-here-nor-there diesel engine. And it was as brown as an alderman’s sideboard. In this setup the Kuga is perfect for the modern age. It’s oxtail soup in a Tetrapak carton.

THE CLARKSO METER

Clarkson’s Verdict

Fun – like my sideboard

ENGINE 1997cc, four cylinder

POWER 134bhp @ 4000rpm

TORQUE 236lb ft @ 2000rpm

TRANSMISSION Six-speed manual

FUEL 44.1mpg (combined)

CO2 169g/km

ACCELERATION 0-62mph in 10.7sec

TOP SPEED 112mph

PRICE £22,495

TAX BAND E (£170 a year)

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