I CAMP a lot. My most recent experience of it was last week.

I was on a work trip to the Highlands and needed to stop on the way, so I parked my car, packed my bag, and headed a good mile up a path to put up my one-person tent in the long grass next to a river in the hills above Bridge of Orchy.

That’s camping. I forgot the matches, so had to drink whisky instead of Ovaltine before bed. I was eaten alive by the midges when I got up in the middle of the night in just my shorts to take a leak, and they were at me again when I took the tent down the next day and ran off down the path.

It’s the kind of stuff outdoors enthusiasts do, and it’s good for us.

Contrast this with our glorious leader, with First World War army-style bell tent parked just yards away from a £1500 a week cottage in the Highlands, in a remote spot but right next to a public road.

He apparently said he would be spending some time under canvas this year, and I guess this is his way of showing he’s a man of his word.

It’s the sort of tent you could put a canvas camp bed in, along with a mat for your batman to sleep at the foot of it and your vintage wooden travel chest.

No doubt that’s the sort of fantasy Boris Johnson indulged in, if indeed he has spent a night in the thing, which he may not have given the proximity of a wood-burner and a comfy bed, and the fact that he has previously shown us how much a man of his word he is ...

But with his glamping-style accommodation, Johnson is missing out on the character-building nature of camping in Scotland. Even on some of our proper campsites life can be tough: one I used to visit regularly requires a bike to visit the loo, because it’s so far away from the pitches.

Others favourite sites of mine are just plots by the side of the road where your kids fall in the burn when they go to collect water.

You share them with all sorts: I recall getting home to one such site to see the nice collie dog I had been patting earlier running off with my sausages like a cartoon mutt escaping from the butcher’s.

Burned porridge, noodles and bacon rolls make up your entire diet because anything else on a single gas ring is tricky, but you’re better for it, and you enjoy your fish supper all the more when you get it.

If Johnson really wants to enjoy some time under canvas in the great Scottish outdoors I’d be happy to show him how it’s done: a bit of suffering and some real contact with nature might wake him up to reality for the vast majority of folk in Scotland.