ACTIVITIES - CAMPING
TOP TEN CAMPING TIPS
The key to a successful camping trip is to be able to unpack all your stuff / pack away all your stuff with as little effort and as much speed as possible. This is a list of things that I have found very useful in helping me make our family camping trips as effort free as possible. We got most of our camping stuff from Go Outdoors, Winfields and Amazon.
- 1. First you need to decide where you are going to stay. There are several resources available when choosing where to stay. Our favourite camping guide book is Cool Camping. You can also access all this information online on their website.
- 2. I have found keeping all the things that you need to hand in one big ‘in tent’ bag particularly useful. This way they can all be found in one place instead of rifling through a myriad of bags and at the end everything can just be gathered up and put back into one big bag, ready for the next trip. I find the wipe-clean jumbo storage bags very useful for the 'In Tent' bag, blanket bag. pillow bag etc.
3. Invest in a good cupboard / storage thing so that you can get stuff off the floor. Some of them can be a bit fiddly to assemble but you can now get ones that just pop up. This is my favourite: Kampa Zara Extra Fast Cupboard
4. Get a bug catcher. No matter what the weather, or how careful you are at zipping up your tent, there will always be a stray mosquito, or wasp or fly. This 'Katcha' device is brilliant, it allows you to easily remove and release said bugs.
5. Get a big rubber mat or that click together rubber flooring to put outside your tent under your canopy if you have one, or inside by the tent front door, This will save you tramping wet grass and mud inside.
6. Get a decent water container. This will provide drinking water, hand washing water and rinsing water and save you traipsing all the way back to the taps. Just make sure it is BPA free or suitable for drinking water - we got one once that was left out in the sun and made the water taste terrible, so I did more research and got this one by Kampa which has been great.
7. Take rubber shoes - crocs / flip flops etc. Your shoes will more likely than not get wet either from wet grass or rain and won't dry out in the tent. Also always take more socks than you think you will need. These Rubber Birkenstock shoes are my favourite as I can wear them with socks if my feet are cold and they're more fetching I feel than Crocs...
8. Get an easy to use camping stove. Bigger is not necessarily better. The best stove we have used is this small CampingGaz Bistro stove. It is compact, easy to use and perfect for heating a kettle, frying pan or saucepan. Fueled by small gas cartridges, there is no need to cart bigger gas bottles round.
9. Take a dustpan and brush - good for getting all the bits of grass / dog hair etc. out of the tent.
10. Take a collapsible washing up bowl and / or a collapsible crate to carry and wash your dirty dishes to the sink and back. I found this washing up bowl useful as it has a nozzle you can pull out to drain the water so I wash and put the things in this bowl to drain and by the time I have finished washing everything up, all the water has drained and you don't even have to dry it... Summit Pop Dish With Draining System
Camping Checklist:
We have compiled a checklist of things that we think you need to take on a camping trip. You can of course take much less or much more, depending on your preferences - we have been camping before and seen people laying out a table complete with table cloth and candles (which did look very nice by the way) and we have also seen walkers who are there with not much more than a sleeping bag and a canopy. Here is a list of the things that have worked for us and hopefully it will give you some guidance / inspiration as to what to take on a family camping trip: Camping Checklist
We have compiled a checklist of things that we think you need to take on a camping trip. You can of course take much less or much more, depending on your preferences - we have been camping before and seen people laying out a table complete with table cloth and candles (which did look very nice by the way) and we have also seen walkers who are there with not much more than a sleeping bag and a canopy. Here is a list of the things that have worked for us and hopefully it will give you some guidance / inspiration as to what to take on a family camping trip: Camping Checklist