The sad demise of Gary (the gazebo) coincided with the imminent arrival of Vanessa so it seemed sensible to replace him with something that could also be used as a van awning. With a bit of research we settled on just the thing – a dometic hub.
When we tried it out back in May some of you helped suggest names for the new addition to our camping family. And after some consideration we settled on suggestion of Harry the Hub. Why? Well, Harry has two pods (or techically annexes) which have been named Barry & Larry!
The pods just zip onto the central hub/gazebo meaning you can have whatever arrangement you prefer, including the option of a wall/door/window. On this occasion, which was the first van trip with both goats, both Barry the Bedroom & Larry the Lavatory were in use!!
The hub is 2.5 m square, so Barry is plenty big enough for even the tall goat to sleep comfortably in. The pod roof slopes quite steeply so we weren’t sure Larry was going to be tall enough to work as a bathroom, but it worked out fine.
With Harry, Barry & Larry, the Nessie set-up goes from petite to spacious! We are looking forward to more trips to try them out!
Well, not really her maiden voyage – we’ve already been enjoying brewing up lots of cups of tea in her and eating choc ices out of her freezer in various locations. But this weekend she had her maiden overnight trip!!
We didn’t venture far, as we needed to call in a Sussex Campervans to collect her bed boards (to enable someone to sleep in the pop up roof). And then we had a very enjoyable, if expensive, look round CampingWorld which is also near Horsham. We treated Nessie to a hook-up wire (so she can use campsite electricity), a fire extinguisher and a collapsible kettle.
We then, finally, made our way to Bonnington Farm campsite near Billingshurst. The forecast had been rain, but we were very grateful for beautiful sunshine to try out the awning for the first time.
We’ll do a seperate post reviewing the awning in detail, but we were pleased with it. With one goat in the awning and one in the van, everyone slept well.
As it was sunny, we opted to cook in the dutch ovens for our evening meal. But we cooked breakfast of bacon and egg sandwiches in the van… as well as many hot drinks from the new kettle!
There is much optimisation of the packing systems to be done yet – but that’s all part of the fun!!
Following Gary’s sad demise, a new gazebo was in order. This isn’t just any gazebo… but more of that to follow!!
We were grateful that it arrived in time for our latest camping trip as Monday was pretty rainy. We abandoned our plan to walk the fourth part of the pilgrims way (again more on that to follow) and instead hunkered down in the gazebo with mugs of coffee.
Fortunately it wasn’t rainy enough to prevent us cooking breakfast – this is our latest breakfast find, Irwin’s potato breads. Available in Sainsburys in packs of four, they are easy to warm up on the days when you haven’t the time to make potato cakes from scratch. It was pleasing to discover that 4 fitted perfectly on the griddle pan that cam with the primus stove. We had them with bacon and fried eggs – tasty way to start the day.
Yesterday I received a mystery gift from a friend. She’d brought it back for me as a souvenir from her holiday, and she wanted me to guess what it was… could you guess?!
It’s the size that fits into the palm of my hand. I worked out that the black bits on the corners were little stoppers which opened. I read that it said ‘light my fire’ on it… but I could think what it could have to do with fires. I was stumped.
I asked for a clue and she made it do this:
… are you any the wiser? The lid opens and its got three little compartments inside.
The last clue is that two of the black corner stoppers have on them the letters P and S.
Shall I tell you?!
It’s a camping salt and pepper shaker! Isn’t it a fantastic gift for a girl who love camping?!!
Suggestions welcome for what spice/condiment I should put in the third compartment!
You might remember a ridiculous song about Alice the Camel having five humps that you sang as a child? (If not here’s a demonstration we’ve found you on YouTube!!!)… well our Alice also has five humps!! Or at least sometimes – other times she only has 3 or 4!
In this picture she has all her humps – the main tent which comes with a sort of veranda, an additional canopy extension and a vestibule. The additional bits all just zip on so you can add them or not depending on the space you need for that particular trip. Just as in the song, Alice might only have 4 humps sometimes!!
In theory you could probably just keep adding more & more canopy extensions – but we tend to think that 5 humps is big enough… especially when there’s only usually 2 people sleeping inside!!
We’ve recently been telling you about Alice the Palace our Kampa Hayling tent. Well in keeping with her royal title, Alice likes to travel in style!!
Being pretty big and being made of polycotton rather than just polyester, she is pretty heavy. The stronger goat can just about manouvre her, but only with the aid of the Alice’s travel carriage – a bag designed for the Vango Airbeam tent!
Although not designed for the Kampa tent, this bag is ideal – it is big enough to be able to roll Alice into it without too much trouble. There are seatbelts (well straps!) to compress her down a bit, but best of all there are wheels. She can be wheeled from the car, straight down the driveway and into the garage.
It’s definitely worth doing some research and not just going with the packing solutions offered by your particular tent manafacturer.
In the post about our recent camping trip, we promised to introduce you to Alice properly. Well here she is in all her beauty at Pit Hill campsite:
Some of you might actually remember her arrival. She is a Kampa Hayling 4 Classic in polycotton. For a large tent, she is pretty easy to put up as she is inflatable and we have an electric pump and battery pack, so we don’t even need to pump manually!
What’s with her name? Well, of all our tents she is by far the most luxurious. We found ourselves describing her as a palace – so when we were trying to think of a name for her we decided Alice the Palace had a nice ring to it!
We’ll look forward to introducing her more fully over the next few blog posts.
Firstly, who is Betty?! She is my Skoda Yeti – and I love her because she is reliable and she has a decent sized boot. You can also take the back seats out, which is very handy to squeeze in lots of camping stuff!! But on our last trip she really excelled herself… and doubled as our kitchen!
An 84 litre ‘really useful’ box with some drawers from Ikea sitting inside formed our kitchen unit. I put a little peice of wood under the box to make sure that the drawers opened easily over the lip of the boot.
The top drawer had plates, bowls, mugs, goblets, kitchenfoil, the teapot and a collapsible kettle. I also stowed a hanging toiletry bag in there which I repurposed as an organiser for our cutlery and washing-up supplies. On arrival it hung from the Betty’s boot struts.
The bottom drawer was our food store. The square storage boxes you get from Lakeland fitted perfectly. We didn’t get round to labelling them, but the coloured lids allowed for a bit of colour-coding! Jars of spices etc also fitted nicely in there.
On top of the drawers I stowed my collapsible washing-up bowls – one for washing up (black) and one for our handwash station (grey). Our chopping boards also fitted there – we have a set of thin colour-coded ones from Robert Dyas, which we are very pleased with, plus a bamboo bread board. Down the side of the drawers, I stowed cleaning spray, salt & pepper pots and Henrietta, but at the campsite these things were in use and we used this space to store tins of food. (Spot the nice perch Henrietta found in the pictures above!)
Next to the ‘really useful’ box I put my outwell storage caddy with our pots & pans and other utensils.
It was very pleasing to set up the ‘demonstration’ table (we call it that because it’s height makes it look like you are giving a cooking demonstation to those sitting round the campfire!) at right angles to Betty. At it’s highest height the demonstration table (from lifetime) was tall enough to fit the big cool box (from iceytech) underneath and still be able to open the cool box.
Our stove (primus) sat on the table and meant we had a very practical cooking space. We had thought that the open boot would give a bit of shelter from the elements, but we didn’t get the opportunity to test that out as happily we were camping in a heatwave!
It’s become a running joke that this goat feels the cold at night. I always wear thermals to sleep in when I’m camping, even in the height of summer. At either end of the season you might find me wearing double thermals, a wool jumper, woolly socks, woolly hat and gloves inside two sleeping bags… and it’s not as if we camp in the artic, we rarely get further than Sussex!! And of course unless it’s a super warm night I insist on a hot water bottle…but you already know that top camping tip.
The reason it is so funny is that the other goat will probably just be in her summer jammas… but cocooned in her Western Mountaineering sleeping bag. It’s so super warm that she often she doesn’t bother to zip it up!
This season I’ve decided it was time for an upgrade! I compared lots of options and in the end went with Thermarest Questar 20. It seemed a good balance of good quality down, light weight and yet not as expensive as some.
When it arrived I couldn’t wait to go camping to try it out – so I decided that I would sleep in it at home on my bed. To test out whether it was warm I put aside my winter pyjamas and slept in a summer nightie.
At first I was a bit concerned, it’s so lightweight it didn’t feel snuggly warm, but about 4.30am I woke up because I was too hot!!
There are some good features which the websites don’t really tell you about:
The thing that annoyed me most about my old sleeping bag (mountain hard wear women’s lamina 20) was that the zip always got snagged on the lining. I’ve slept in it a lot over many years, and I’ve still not got the knack of how to stop it catching. But the thing that annoys me most is that when I bought it, the sales assistant specifically told me that it had a special tape to stop the zip catching!! Anyway, I’m more hopeful about the new one as it has two thick tapes and the zipper itself has a sheath over it.
I think the website details maybe did tell me about this feature, but I didn’t understand what it was. This is a photo of the inside bottom of the sleeping bag… a special little place to tuck your toes in to keep them warm!
Similarly the web details did say it was W.A.R.M…. this label shows what that means quite nicely!
I was a bit confused why there were funny loops on the bag of the new sleeping bag – turns out it’s a way to keep the bag on your sleeping mat. Clearly I couldn’t test this out on my bed, but I’ll give it a go in the tent as it sounds a good idea.
I was also pleased to know that the down in the sleeping bag had been resourced responsibly and the ducks might have had a happy life. You can read more about it on the RDS website.
I’ll let you know how I get on when I test it out for real on a camping trip…hopefully some time soon!
L
PS this post was written last month (when it was still wintery) – sorry for the delay there was an issue with uploading the photos.
Embrace your inner goat 