The Churches Conservation Trust helps maintain and repurpose more than 300 churches in Britain that are no longer used for worship. To raise money for the buildings’ upkeep, the trust now offers visitors the chance to have a sleepover in the sanctuary, which they’ve dubbed champing, a portmanteau that combines the words church and camping. Their promotional materials also offer a slap-up breakfast, slap-up being a Britishism that means “first-rate.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Slap-Up Champing”
For my next vacation, I’m considering champing something kind of some kind of camping exactly.
It’s not glamping, right? Which is glamour camping. Yes, is it cheer camping you’re going to go to?
Cheerleader camp? Cheerleader camp? What is it? What is champing? It’s camping in churches. Really, that’s in the UK. It is a thing.
Really?
There are 350 churches as part of the Church’s Conservation Trust. It’s the organization that looks after hundreds of what they call redundant churches. And a redundant church is a church building that’s no longer used for public worship and is used mostly to refer to former Anglican buildings in the United Kingdom.
And so there’s this whole organization that will let you spend the night in their churches. You bring your own bedding and you sleep in a church.
So they move aside the pews or take them out altogether, and there you are with a bunch of other people sleeping in a church?
No, I mean, you can book it for your own family or something.
Oh, the whole thing. Oh, I see. Okay.
Yeah.
I was imagining more of a hostile situation.
No, no, no. It looks like it’s actually quite comfortable, and they don’t let you burn real candles.
Sure.
They have sort of fake candles. But they raise money for preservation.
Sure, and they’re trying to popularize this term champing. I haven’t seen it in any other context.
I’ve been reading up on it, and another term I learned from that, they promise a slap-up breakfast. That’s just a quick down-and-dirty one.
That’s what I thought, or, you know, slapping together a couple pieces of toast.
Oh, I see. It’s a really great breakfast.
It’s a really great breakfast.
But I’ve eaten British breakfast, and it’s usually some really kind of weak, limp sausages.
Right.
And a runny pool of beans.
And toast in Iraq.
Yeah, toast.
It was toasted yesterday in Iraq. Although, yeah, I think British food has gotten better than its reputation.
Okay, this is within 10 years. Especially with more diversity there.
But isn’t that cool, a slap-up breakfast?
Slap-up breakfast, sure.
A great one, a good one, a solid one.
Yeah, slap-up means very or unmistakably good or fine of superior quality.
Anyway, think about champing. It might be fun and creepy, too, in the right kind of old church.
That’s why I want to do it.
Something from the 1600s, right?
