Author: embraceyourinnergoat

End of season sort out

/ embraceyourinnergoat / 3 Comments

I love the fact that even though the days are short, it’s getting chilly and the weather is generally blowing a gale, every single week someone asks us whether we’ve been camping!!

We hate to disappoint, but actually our camp gear is tucked away waiting for the new season to start!

After the last camp of the season is a good time to take stock of items that need to be replenished or replaced.  You may even get good deals in the sales! It’s also good to have items before first camp of next season – the UK weather is unpredictable and you want to be ready to go at short notice should we get a mild Spring!

This is also a good opportunity to do more thorough cleaning and repairs if needed.  For example, you might undertake any tent repairs or give the stove a thorough clean. Make sure everything is properly dry (particularly tents) before being stored away for the season.

At this time of year we give all our camping kitchen items a good wash – and even Henrietta gets a bath!  For those of you who haven’t met Henrietta before here’s a photo of her.  Clearly a tea cosy is an essential item of camp equipment!!

Henrietta guarding some Welsh cakes!!

We also clean out all the boxes.  These are plastic storage crates of varying sizes which we store our camping bits and pieces in.  Not only do the boxes keep things safe and dry when you’re storing them, but they make packing the car, transporting equipment and keeping the kitchen tent organised much, much easier.

Batteries should be removed from lanterns and head torches when you put them away for winter to avoid the batteries from leaking and potentially ruining your lantern.

If you have leftover camping food supplies, be careful how you store these.  Go through all the items checking their best before dates and if it’s before next Easter put them in your kitchen cupboard to get used up at home.  If you have items that you have decanted into separate containers (eg sugar and flour) it’s best to use these up and start afresh next year. 

Although it’s always a bit sad to have reached the end of a camping season, taking the time to sort through things now, means that as soon as the days start to get longer and warmer again, you’ll be ready to go at the drop of a hat!

R

The Damson Vodka

/ embraceyourinnergoat / 2 Comments

In the last post you’ll have read about how I picked wild damsons with the intention to make wild damson vodka. Well here’s how I got on.

This is the recipe I adapted for the amount of damsons I had:

  1. Freeze (or prick, but that sounds fiddley) 170g wild damsons
  2. Put the damsons in a bottle with 170g white sugar, 340ml vodka and 3 cloves.
  3. shake every other day for a month
  4. shake occasionally for 3 months
  5. strain and bottle
  6. leave for 6 months to mellow
  7. serve as a liquer or over ice

So far I’m about 1 month in, so I’m afraid I cannot yet vouch for whether or not this recipe is any good. I’ll let you know next summer!

L

Our knight in shining armour?

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Ok well sadly not.  We would be very happy if a knight in shining armour did turn up to help out with the washing up, but for now we’ll just have to make do with a piece of his chainmail!

Yes, that’s right, the latest addition to our campsite washing up system is a scourer made of chainmail.

chainmail scourer

Chainmail scourers are ideal for cleaning dirty dutch ovens.  They scrape, but don’t scratch and the food residue is easily cleaned out of the chain mail cloth.

They are easily available online ( for example here ).

We are very pleased with ours.  It has been well used over the last month or so we’ve had it.  The dutch ovens are now all washed and seasoned and tucked away in the shed… although we’re hopeful there might be more fire food yet, even if camping might be over for the season.

L & R

Camping at Climping

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We managed to catch the last of the warm weather when we tried out this new campsite the other week.

It’s a bit of an odd set up – you arrive at a gate with the wrong name on it, and follow the lane past a pretty farm house, then past less pretty farm buildings & parked up HGVs. Keep following the little tent signposts through a timber yard, drive along the fence for the prison, through a field and you arrive at Cuckoo Camp.

The pitches are individually marked out. The provision of your own private water tap for your pitch is contrasted by the requirement to bring your own toilet.

Although we could hear the road at night, we also were able to walk to Littlehampton and along the beach to Climping via footpaths. And yes, we did have an ice-cream and a paddle to celebrate the end of summer.

See how we scored this campsite of contrasts!

R & L

The camping season is far from over

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The camping season needn’t end with the school holidays! So far, the weather in September has been lovely for camping and we took the opportunity to try out another new site, Cedar Valley.

It’s a small site, so it felt a bit crowded, but we quite liked it – see how we scored it.

Some pictures from our trip:

We have plans to squeeze in another September camping trip to another new campsite – we’ll keep you posted how we get on!

R & L