Weaving Through Weather on a Danish Caravan Site

Introduction

It’s morning at the caravan site. I weave into the paths of a few others making their way to the common bathrooms to shower. I’m wearing slippers and a robe over my pyjamas, and I briefly shudder in the chilly morning. The sun is just rising and has yet to warm the misty air; my steps leave prints next to others in the dewy grass, and I breathe in the crisp morning air.

We have a late lunch. The clouds are drifting in, and the wind is catching up. We go for a walk on the beach in our sandals and windbreakers. We brought a kite, and we spend the entire afternoon watching it catch the wind as the edges of the kite flap rapidly against the strong winds, forcing it to duck and dive, with help from my little sister tugging first one string then the other. She loses control of the forceful turns, and the kite plummets to the ground and crashes into the sand with a large “thump.” It survives, and I pick it up to get it airborne once again.

The above are narratives of childhood memories of one of my own caravan holidays with my family. I open the article with these narratives for two reasons. First, it accentuates a main focus in this study, the trivial and mundane doings we engage in, in negotiation with weather. Second, it exemplifies some of the embodied responses afforded by weather, shuddering in the cold or breathing in crisp air. Weather is a concept of great importance, relating either to larger phenomena such as climate change, and the challenging consequences this has on a global scale (e.g., Kirschbaum, Saggar, Tate, Thakur, & Giltrap, 2013; McNall, 2011), or small activities such as flying a kite. The former has received attention both pertaining to the consequences of climate change (e.g., Emanuel, 2007; Gómez-Martín, Armesto-López, & Amelung, 2016; Kirschbaum et al., 2013) and within the field of tourism (e.g., Gössling et al., 2011; Peeters & Eijgelaar, 2014; Saarinen, 2014; Weaver, 2011). Furthermore, weather is an ever-present topic in everyday discourses from global disasters to what to wear, where to go, and even affecting how you feel (e.g., Böhme, 2013; Ingold, 2010). Thus, making weather a highly embodied experience (Førland et al., 2013) is an aspect that is often overlooked. In tourism literature, weather is often represented from two extremes, the positives of the sun and the activities it renders possible, such as lounging by the pool and frolicking on the beach, and murky, rainy days, which hinder your planned activities in the sun and represent something you shield from and wait for to pass (Gössling, Bredberg, Randow, Sandström, & Svensson, 2006; Scott & Lemieux, 2010). Moreover, forecasts usually portray weather from simplified angles, where rain and wind is “bad” and sun is “good” weather (Berland, 1993).

Going on a summer holiday is generally portrayed as leaving the gray and rainy everyday weather at home and traveling to sunny, blue skies to have exceptional experiences under the sun (e.g., Gómez Martín, 2005; Lohmann & Kaim, 1999; Maddison, 2001; Rutty & Scott, 2010). This is also seen by the excessive use of words relating to sunshine in tourism contexts, such as sunny beach and Costa del Sol, and a general “sun lust” within package tourism (Perry, 1993, 2006). Notwithstanding, summer holidays can, as most have experienced firsthand, bring about all kinds of weather—cloudy, windy, and drizzling—demanding negotiated holiday activities interwoven with weather. As Vannini, Waskul, Gottschalk, and Ellis-Newstead (2011) argue, “few of our mundane activities remain untouched by weather” (p. 377); however, despite its ubiquitous presence, this subject has received little consideration. There is a need to study experiences of, and performances with, everyday weather in tourism as tourists spend a lot of time preoccupied with everyday, mundane weaving through weather.

The weather is, as mentioned, often a topic of conversation as it has great influence on everyday life. This is particularly significant in a Danish context, where the weather can be highly elusive and quick to shift, demanding a high responsiveness (Theilgaard, 2010). Relating to this study, caravanning is a type of holiday where tourists are more “exposed” to the elements of weather as you spend more time outside in nature (Triantafillidou & Siomkos, 2013; Viallon, 2012) and have to respond to this changeable weather. However, weather is relatively neglected in this context. Furthermore, the minimal literature that exists focuses on caravanners seeking out sunshine, the so-called nomads following the sun (Burgin & Hardiman, 2016; Mings, 1997; Onyx & Leonard, 2005), or snowbirds traveling south in the winter (Viallon, 2012). Thus, the literature on caravanning echoes the broader academic discourses on escaping everyday weather to chase the sun.

The article has three aims. First, it seeks to nuance discourses on weather by researching people’s embodied and sensuous negotiations of everyday weather on holiday. Second, it attempts to broaden understandings of holiday weather beyond that of sunny destinations. Third, a further contribution to knowledge emerges as I focus on the sensuous, skilled interplay between people and materials, proposing the concept of “weathering” to inform the relatively neglected role of everyday weather in tourism research. In this study, weather is defined as “the condition of the atmosphere at any particular time and place” (Matzarakis & De Freitas, 2001, p. 4). Or, as put more pictorially by Ingold and Kurttila (2000), “weather . . . is about what it feels like to be warm, or cold, drenched in rain, caught in a storm and so on” (p. 187), accentuating the sensuous and embodied focus of this study. Conclusively, the aim is to discuss forms of somatic, sensuous, everyday routines, and movements cultivated and performed with weather. This is done by employing weathering (Vannini et al., 2012) as a central concept to contribute to knowledge in these matters.

Holiday Weather

An atmosphere can be gloomy or cozy depending on numerous factors affecting one’s perception, yet the atmosphere is neither exclusively representative of a state of mind nor an objective thing “out there.” As Bille, Bjerregaard, and Sørensen (2015) argue, “Atmospheres are always located inbetween experiences and environments” (p. 32). Atmosphere and weather are interlinked as “the term atmosphere has its origin in the meteorological field and refers to the earth’s envelope of air which carries the weather” (Böhme, 2013, p. 2). In this article, I make use of the concept of weather in its atmospheric context of “in-betweenness.” Weather is a dynamic concept, ever changing from blue to gray, from cold and crisp to warm and wet; it is ever present, always surrounding us, permeating our walls and clothes and affecting our moods and doings. Despite its burgeoning presence, everyday weather has received little academic attention.

For tourists, weather is an intrinsic component of the holiday experience (Scott, Gössling, & De Freitas, 2008; Scott & Lemieux, 2010) and “the pivotal base from which tourists are likely to consider making changes or not” (Becken & Wilson, 2013, p. 635). The importance of weather has been examined in tourism contexts (e.g., Denstadli, Jacobsen, & Lohmann, 2011; Gómez Martín, 2005; Hein, Metzger, & Moreno, 2009; Scott & Lemieux, 2010). However, the presentation of weather in tourism marketing and research tends to highlight the weather believed to attract tourists (e.g., sun, sand, and sea—Crick, 1989), whereas those aspects of weather presumably being perceived as negative (e.g., rain and wind) are downplayed (Gössling et al., 2006; Scott & Lemieux, 2010). Additionally, mass tourism is represented by packaged tours to the Mediterranean sun and beaches, making it “the model for the global quest for a tourist paradise of eternal sunshine, palm trees, and white sands” (Löfgren, 1999, p. 10). Opposing these heliocentric discourses, we find a few studies centering on braving against foul or extreme weather on adventurous holidays (see, e.g., Beedie & Hudson, 2003; Gyimóthy & Mykletun, 2004), mirroring the focus on the extreme and the spectacular in tourism, whereas the banal is overlooked (Binnie, Edensor, Holloway, Millington, & Young, 2007; Obrador, Crang, & Travlou, 2009). As such, the “in-between,” everyday weather has largely been ignored by tourism researchers despite it being an integral part of most holidays, packaged or not.

Rather than being opposing dichotomies, “good” and “bad” weather are negotiated concepts that may vary with circumstances, contexts, cultural backgrounds, and preferences (Becken & Wilson, 2013; Gómez Martín, 2005; Saarinen, 2014). For example, Limb and Spellman (2001) used in-depth discussion groups to investigate the importance of tourist memories and experiences in relation to climate. They found children’s responses to “good” and “bad” weather to be quite complex. Although rain was seen as a threat to a good holiday, opportunities to spend time with the family indoors when it is raining were welcomed. The experience of what is normally thought of as adverse weather elements, such as rain, mist, and low temperatures, is highly contextual and varies across tourism environments and cultures (Lohmann & Kaim, 1999). Denstadli and Jacobsen (2014) even argue further that “a cool summer climate might be a pull factor” (p. 82). As such, it is not just a question of leaving the gray, windy weather at home and going somewhere sunny. Rather, windy, wet weather is embedded in most people’s holiday experience and can be the foundation from which extraordinary experiences spring. Consequently, I accentuate weather undercurrents and their multisensuous everydayness that people negotiate on holiday.

Embodied and Sensuous Weather

This study highlights the sensuous and embodied aspects of tourist experiences with weather. The sensuous has received slow-growing attention since the “sensuous turn” (Pink, 2009), turning the focus to multisensory environments (e.g., Bissell, 2010; Vannini & Taggart, 2013). The sensory, it has been argued, is important in the construction of space (Diaconu, Heuberger, Mateus-Berr, & Vosiky, 2011; Rodaway, 1994) as it unfolds across the blurred boundaries between body and environment (Simonsen, 2007), where each acts on the other in a “reciprocal interplay between embodied persons and materialized things” (Ingold, 2007, p. S30)—for example, when diverting the course of rain by using an umbrella or walking underneath the storefront awnings so as not to get wet. As such, the sensuous and the embodied are highly interlinked. Weather imposes itself on people; however, this impact can be modified by behavioral responses such as changing what you had planned or dressing according to the weather (De Freitas, 2003). Thus, negotiating and sensing the weather can have an impact on your daily rhythm, pace, and style of movement (see, e.g., Edensor & Holloway, 2008; Lefebvre, 2004; Molz, 2009). Consequently, we can affect the weather, and the weather can affect our behavior, doings, and moods. This demands embodied knowledge achieved through dwelling (Cloke & Jones, 2001; Heidegger, 1971; Ingold, 2000) and moving in places. This process has been called “weathering,” where “people make and remake dynamic places and selves in a performative ecology of movement” (Vannini et al., 2011, p. 361). In the context of caravanning, this allows for an everyday, multisensuous approach to emerge wherein the reciprocal interplay between people and materials explored. These “weathering” practices become especially prevalent in the context of caravanning, as I will discuss in the following.

Weather on a Danish Caravan Site

As mentioned, the literature on weather has focused on sun-seeking caravanners (Glover & Prideaux 2009; Mings 1997; Onyx & Leonard 2005), also referred to as snowbirds (McHugh & Mings, 1991; Mings, 1984; Mings & McHugh, 1995; Viallon, 2012). Intrinsically, besides highlighting faraway traveling caravanners being on the road for months, the focus is on a nomadic movement away from the gray, cold weather at home toward warmer, sunnier climates. For example, Viallon (2012) explored snowbirds leaving France in their recreational vehicles each winter to spend several months in Morocco. Additionally, Mings (1984) interviewed retired couples wintering in caravan parks in far-north Queensland. One exception is the study by Hassell, Moore, and Macbeth (2015), who found that people experience caravanning in cool, wet weather as an adventure and a challenge in itself. However, this approach echoes the preoccupation with the spectacular in tourism research. Overall, the literature on weather in caravanning is sparse, and the research mentioning weather is one-sided. This is puzzling because weather is particularly interesting in the case of caravanning as it plays a particularly relevant role in this context. Caravanning is defined here as an outdoor recreational activity of dwelling in more or less mobile units, such as camper trailers, pop-tops, caravans, tents, cottages, or recreational vehicles (henceforth referred to as dwelling units). Hence, people are traveling and dwelling in tents, caravans, and the like, being much more in contact with the weather than on other types of holidays. In a study of self-drive tourists’ trip planning and decision making, Becken and Wilson (2006) found that the tourists’ travel plans commonly changed because of unfavorable weather. However, they also argue that tourists have a great adaptive capacity, being able to cope better with changing weather if they are prepared for it. Weather can thus be seen as a “taskscape” (Ingold, 2000), facilitating certain types of actions and discouraging others, and prompting us to learn certain kinds of techniques for everyday living (Vannini et al., 2011).

As such, while being more exposed to the weather, caravanners in Denmark are required to be prepared to engage with the affective intensities (Jones, 2012) of ever-changing weather. Usually, tourists are highly preoccupied with what kind of weather they are going to encounter on holiday so that they can be prepared (Becken & Wilson, 2013; Edensor, 2007; Scott & Lemieux, 2010). Relating to caravanning, the participants in this study are mainly from Denmark and some are from Germany, Sweden, and Norway, where people are attuned to the different kinds of weather they may encounter. Furthermore, the majority have gone caravanning before and are “informed by pre-existing discursive, practical, embodied norms which help to guide their performative orientations and achieve a working consensus about what to do” (Stephen, 2004, p. 340); this also pertains to weather. As such, tourists sense weather in the present moment, but these perceptions are also informed by past experiences and future expectations (Limb & Spellman, 2001; Vannini et al., 2011). The sensuous and embodied weather world is, however, still underresearched (for exceptions, see, e.g., Rantala, Valtonen, & Markuksela, 2011; Vannini et al., 2011).

Consequently, the dominating research discourse, with its focus on seeking out warmer climates, does not flesh out the weather dynamics that are experienced on holiday more broadly. More so does it not look into these dynamics in a type of holiday that contains more outdoor activities and thus more daily negotiation with all types of weather. Weather is an important aspect when it comes to nature-based tourism, such as caravanning (Hewer, 2012; Smith, 1993), and as such it provides a theoretically fruitful vantage point from which to examine the manifold ways in which people weave in and out of weather in their everyday mobilities. In summary, everyday, mundane weather is an underanalyzed theme within the broader tourism research as well as within research on caravanning. In this study, the aim is to explore the study of weather in an embodied context of everyday weavings in and out of weather on a caravan holiday.

Methodology

The empirical material for this article is based on 107 in situ interviews with 198 interviewees conducted at five Danish caravan sites. The majority are from Denmark (78), and the rest are from Germany (15), Norway (9), and Sweden (5). Furthermore, the interviews were supplemented by 2 weeks of observant participation and autoethnographic research.

The interviews were carried out in the peak caravanning season (June–August) in the summers of 2013 and 2014. The average length was 30 minutes; some interviews lasted up to 2 hours, whereas others were cut short as people had other “holiday engagements.” The questions asked were continually reshaped as the research progressed. Some of the main interview questions asked included the following: How does weather play a role in this type of holiday? What do you do in different types of weather? How do you deal with the shifting Danish weather? Some of the patterns that emerged included, for example, a general appreciation of shifting weather and an enjoyment of “in-between,” everyday weather. Furthermore, there was a deep knowledge about what to do in all kinds of weather, which leads to the theme of “weathering.” Doing interviews can offer ways of understanding the verbal, representational layers of everyday life, yet it is limited in facilitating knowledge on the performance of practices, the sensory, and the moments of meaning making (Pink, 2012). To go beyond peoples’ stories and interpretations of caravanning, the interviews were supplemented with observant participation (Dewsbury, 2010; Thrift, 2000), which is a modification of participant observation, emphasizing the immersion involved in fieldwork rather than the more passive gaze of the onlooking participant observer. During my fieldwork, I stayed one week at the Hasmark caravan site in the southwest of Denmark and another week in north Jutland at the Skiveren caravan site, observing and engaging in embodied, everyday experiences (Watson & Till, 2010) such as dishwashing, cooking, and using the common bathrooms. Through this participatory immersion in the rhythms and flows of movement (Larsen, 2014), I examined the multisensorial engagement with weather. Apart from taking field notes and photographs, I attempted from the beginning to keep a personal journal (Martens, 2012) about the thoughts, wonderings, and epiphanies that occurred during the process, to help in understanding how mood and situational factors influence fieldwork (Pink, 2012; Wallendorf & Brucks, 1993). These auto-ethnographic data (see, e.g., Anderson, 2006; Larsen, 2014) complement the observations.

In the analysis, I present my findings in the form of narratives. These narratives are woven from threads of transcripts and field notes. First, when analyzing the interviews, I used thematic analysis (see Boyatzis, 1998; Braun & Clarke, 2006). The analysis involved rereading the transcripts of the interviews, developing themes and subthemes, and identifying the core narrative elements associated with each theme (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Second, I gathered the pieces from the observing participation relevant to this subject and weaved them together, rewriting them to create a better flow (Johnson, 2005). The descriptions and experiences were all represented in the data. With the deployment of narratives, I attempt to provide a lucid and vivid presentation of the findings to enrich the lifeworld of caravanning. My narratives are a writing together of both people’s semantic accounts and field notes on the more embodied practices of caravanning. As such, I attempt through these narratives to capture the embodied and sensuous aspects of caravanning that can be difficult to verbalize.

The study draws on nonrepresentational inspiration (e.g., Dewsbury, 2010; Thrift, 2000, 2008; Vannini & Taggart, 2015) or the “more-than-representational” (Lorimer, 2005), and it focuses on everyday weather, challenging the wider discourses on tourism as counterspaces of liminality and extraordinariness demarcated from everyday life and mundanity (Mossberg, 2008; Rojek, 1995). Instead, I focus on the mundane or banal (Binnie et al., 2007; Larsen, 2008). Being a Dane, I was so entangled in the everyday, where discussing the weather is such a habitualized, grounded theme of conversation, that it was initially overlooked. As Gardiner (2000) emphasizes, we are “always-already” immersed in the everyday (p. 385). Conducting observant participation and attempting to write auto-ethnographically highlights how important (and difficult) it is to try and grasp people’s embodied daily mobilities and activities while still keeping focus on our own prejudices, thoughts, and biases, from which we understand ourselves and our places. Furthermore, in line with nonrepresentational theory, I attempt to highlight the caravan guests’ sensory and embodied engagements with their environments, the entangled ways people navigate these habitual routes through weather. Conclusively, I explore how everyday activities are performed in negotiation with weather. These activities are integral to tourists’ everyday practices and thus become important strategies of negotiating the space for tourists.

Findings and Discussion

Materially Staging Weather

It is afternoon; it has been raining all day, a quiet persistent rain that has left the caravan site almost deserted, apart from the occasional trip to and from the common kitchen and bathroom. I sit in the awning of the caravan in my thick woolly socks and a blanket over my shoulders, feet up, with a hot cup of coffee. We’ve turned on the heaters as the humid chill of the constant rain seems to seep through the thin awning. The warmth of the heaters billows against the cool air. I pull the blanket a bit closer and take a sip of my coffee. The sound of the rain’s soft pitter patter mixes with the muffled voices of the people in the adjacent tents and awnings. A few children are playing outside, defying the rain, or perhaps embracing it, running barefoot in the puddles in their raincoats.

During my fieldwork, on the days when the rain was particularly persistent and heavy, many guests at the caravan site enjoyed making themselves cozy inside their dwelling unit, usually staying in their front awnings. People would mention, for example, listening to the radio, drinking coffee, playing cards, talking, or reading a book. As one Danish woman in her 50s traveling with her husband and two children put it,

Yes, it rains [laughing], no kidding! But there is a charm in sitting in here, and it is raining, and both gas heaters are going, and its nice and cozy in here, right? We’re warm, even though it is cold outside. Last year, it was snowing, and we had both heaters going, and we sat in here in stockinged feet—that is cozy. You’re in here, in a small front awning, and the snow is just outside.

Material elements like heaters and socks were often brought up as part of making a cozy atmosphere. Some would also mention sensuous elements such as the sounds and smells of the rain, and this was further explored through autoethnography. At times when it was raining, the site became more still, and people would gather round in their front awnings or inside their tents or recreational vehicles. Walking around the site, I would see warm lights seeping out as people turned on small lamps they had brought from home or candle lights. I could hear the mumbling voices of people playing cards and talking. While walking around the site, I could almost sense the coziness flowing from the dwelling units, pulling me in. Sitting together with others, playing cards, or reading a book allowed people to be both dry and cozy while still enjoying the smells, sights, and sounds of the weather. The see-through plastic “windows” of the awnings create a sense of being both inside and outside at the same time, as the outside spills into the awning and the boundaries between inside and outside become blurred. I argue that these performances are not shielding from the rain but rather sheltering from the rain; as Bille (2015, p. 59) argues, hygge (coziness) as an important part of domesticity should not be seen as in opposition to the threat and danger of the outside but, rather, as a feeling of shelteredness and secureness. As such, “rainy-day performances” do not shield oneself from the outside but perhaps rather emphasize the exchanges that happen between inside and outside—for example, turning on heaters to accentuate that cool winds are seeping through the awning (see Figure 1); wearing thick socks to underline the closeness of the soil through the thin, makeshift “floor”; or drinking hot coffee to fortify the warmth of one’s body against the cold.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Caravan awning.

Consequently, this feeling of appreciating the rain does not just “happen to” people. People orchestrate it; they put on appropriate clothing, turn on small heaters, make coffee, or sit together with other people and play cards, talk, and the like. Thus, making oneself cozy is a highly embodied and sensuous performance. As such, besides the blurring boundaries of inside and outside that the awning illustrates, material objects such as coffee, games, knitting attires, radios, blankets, and books, as well as other people, are imperative to the material staging and performances of “enjoying the rain.” This emphasizes the sensuous at the blurred boundary between body and environment (Jones, 2012), where people going caravanning engage in a sensory interplay between “affecting” the weather (e.g., creating shade, sheltering from the wind and rain) and being affected by the weather. Furthermore, it takes prior bodily experience or “lay geographical knowledge” (Crouch, 1999) to know that sitting in an awning or a tent when it rains, which to some could seem like an uncomfortable situation, can transform into an extraordinarily cozy situation. Materially staging weather is an ongoing part of the ecology and daily rhythm of the caravan site. As an example, people would drive down to the beach and bring chairs and tables and sit at the beach with a cup of coffee in different kinds of weather. Another example would be bringing packed lunches to the playground and eating while the children played, even when it was drizzling. Consequently, staging weather on a caravan site is an assemblage of material objects, embodied performances, and prior experiences, underlining the exchanges that happen between body and environment.

Practices of Weathering

In the interviews, people would usually bring up weather when talking about what they did during the day, as one of the initial questions in the interview guide was asking people to go through what they would do on a “typical” day, from the time they got up till they went to sleep. In these accounts, weather would often come up as an important factor for the activities they would engage in—for example, “If it is raining, then we will . . .” or “If it is a sunny day, we usually . . .”—as the following narrative illustrates:

It’s raining this morning, so we’re staying inside, playing games and reading. If it continues, we’ll visit the Nordsee Museum this afternoon. Yesterday was sizzling hot, and we lay by the pool and went to the beach. I love this changing weather, not knowing what it is going to be like tomorrow—we’ll take it as it comes. When the weather doesn’t allow for anything else, I do a lot of knitting, getting cozy inside with coffee and the radio on. But we always go outside, no matter the weather; you kind of have to, so we brought our wellies and waterproofs.

Many people going caravanning reflected on “taking it as it comes,” meaning that they weave their activities into any weather they may experience. The majority of the interviewees underlined the positives of the shifting nature of weather, that in one day you can encounter several different kinds of weather. On a rainy, windy day, some would stay inside while others would enjoy a brisk walk on the beach. Whereas a sunny day for some meant relaxing at the beach, others would leave the site to go for a stroll in the nearest city center. Weather has agency, and we try to resonate with its movements by, for example, bringing the appropriate attire (e.g., wellies). The narrative also illustrates how experiences of “good” and “bad” weather are highly contextual and negotiated (Becken & Wilson, 2013; Saarinen, 2014). Furthermore, it suggests how knowledge and prior experience with going caravanning enable tourists to engage in performances that align with the weather (e.g., by bringing along wellies and waterproofs as well as one’s knitting). Many interviewees brought up this aspect of knowing what to expect. For example, a man in his 70s traveling with his wife remarked, “We know the North Sea and how it is. If you cannot stomach a little wind and a few sandstorms, don’t come to the North Sea.” However, experience with a place and the weather can mean more than knowing what to bring. It also relates to bodily experience and prior knowledge on how to “do” caravanning. This became evident during the auto-ethnographic fieldwork when I sometimes struggled with the changing weather. People would go out in all kinds of weather and did not seem fazed by drizzling, windy weather. Especially children seemed not only not bothered but even quite thrilled about splashing in puddles of rain. Having had little prior experience with this kind of holiday, I never found myself completely comfortable with the ever-shifting weather.

As mentioned, this study aims to challenge heliocentric, beach-oriented discourses. For this, one of the things I did was that I followed people’s everyday movements to the beach. These movements were, as mentioned, undertaken in all kinds of weather, and although I, unsurprisingly, experienced more people on the beach in sunny, warm weather, there was not a single of the (many) gray, rainy, windy days when there were not a number of people on the beach.

The picture (Figure 2) is a somewhat atypical photo of the beach where the white sands, the deep blue ocean, and the sun are not present. Instead, it presents moist, gray sand and dark, murky waters, with not a sun ray in sight. People are engaged in various activities, throwing rocks in the water, digging in the sand, gazing over the waters, or walking. The weathering practices seen here exemplify what to do in not so sunny weather. The beach, the epitomy of sun lust, with suntanning, naked bodies, is here seen in a way that punctuates these general dichotomies of the beach—thus punctuating romantic accounts of the beach (Obrador, 2009) and repositioning the beach not as a place of endless sun and naked bodies but as a place where all kinds of weather are mulitsensuously performed. The beach is sensually experienced here through the weather, the waves, the reflections of the colors of the sky in the water, and the dense and wet, dark sand. As a result, caravanners’ weathering practices might help us think more broadly about how weather is used to shape relationships with broader landscapes. Rather than considering gray, rainy days to be bad and sunny days to be good, it is more productive to develop a relational understanding of these conditions. People are inherently attuned by prior knowledge to what to expect in order to skilfully weather their lives (Bille, 2015; Vannini et al., 2011). So it seems that people go caravanning both because they are “wired” for this kind of holiday and because they wish to experience “undisciplined sensory stimulation” (Jones, 2012). I therefore argue that caravanners do not develop skills to “resist” the weather; rather, they cooperate with it, dance with it, and not just cope with it.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

The gray beach.

In this article, I emphasize a different image from what we get of the beach from destination marketing material. Rather, a beach can be a place of embodied and sensuous performativity that includes not only the beach and the people at the beach but also the underresearched, but nevertheless central, actor we usually label “weather.” Weathering your everyday at a caravan site is thus sensing what the weather affords and in return orchestrating your movements in and through it by use of materialities. Consequently, weaving through weather is a somatic, sensuous performance of skilfully negotiating and moving with everyday weather in a reciprocal manner.

Conclusion

Despite the bourgeoning presence of weather, research on weather is scarce. Furthermore, because of its ever-present influence on everyday activities, there is a need for more in-depth research on experiences of mundane weather. In this paper, I have tried to contribute to the underresearched area of everyday weather in the context of the highly elusive Danish weather on a caravan site. In this article, I have attempted to elucidate weather less as a binary opposition of good and bad but, rather, as textured and nuanced. I argue that tourists at Danish caravan sites construct and negotiate routines, rhythms, and responses to the shifting, everyday weather. Furthermore, people are attuned by prior bodily knowledge to skilfully weathering their lives and orchestrating enjoying everyday weather on holiday. This culminates in a skillful interplay between people and weather where a symbiotic relationship is formed between materiality and people. In this article, I have further attempted to challenge heliocentric discourses on the sun, sand, and sea by repositioning the beach as a place where all kinds of weather are skillfully and mulitsensuously performed.

Weather affords certain activities, and in return people affect the weather, and therefore, it is imperative for tourism researchers to develop a more nuanced understanding of how tourists form relational understandings of weather. The research presented in this article points to the need for further research on more mundane weather in different holiday contexts. It could be interesting to extend this research by exploring further experiences of everyday weather in not so sunny destinations. In relation to caravan sites specifically, it is important for site owners to consider and make use of this “in-between” weather both in their marketing strategies and in the spatial formation of the sites. Further research on sensuous and embodied performances and experiences of quotidian weather could also be fruitful. I argue that weather is not just a backdrop for various alfresco activities, it is woven into and affects our doings, feelings, and experiences. Weaving through weather is a somatic, sensuous performance of skillfully negotiating and moving with everyday weather in a reciprocal manner. Conclusively, these everyday activities and performances are integral to tourists’ everyday practices and thus become important strategies of negotiating spaces for tourists.