camping gear

Fairy-lit trip

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Second trip of the year for Nessie, but first for the two goats together, was to our old favourite Stoneywish campsite. We love it there – it’s easy to get to for us after work, the campsite is relaxed without to many rules and you can easily go for a walk on the downs or just mooch around the local village. Facilities are few, but fires are allowed!

We always enjoy people watching at Stoneywish, it’s a firm favourite with those living the van-life, so there are a wide variety of semi-permenant set ups, with people going to & from work, as well as families and groups of friends. Our favourite was when we happened to be there over Beltane and were pitched next to a group of witches – watching their ceremony was our evening entertainment, while we cooked our dinner in a cauldron over our own fire!

The neighbours we were people watching this trip had fairylights up… so not to be out done, we got ours up too!!

Fairylights are an excellant car camping accessory – not only do they make your pitch look magical, they are great for finding your way back to your tent in the dark. If you string them down the guy ropes, you can also help prevent people tripping over them – a hazard that can be genuinely dangerous as one of our friends discovered a few years back.

We had two sets of fairy lights with us, both of which are solar powered and both of which wind into their own little round plastic case making them suitable for outdoor use. Both sets were gifts, so I can’t actually post you links to either as I don’t know where they came from! The ones in the photo are very pretty and will also do different colours, if that’s your thing. The others have just a few lights, but you can turn them up so brightly that I can happily cook by the light of them under our gazebo.

An extra bonus of our stays at Stoneywish is that we are often joined by a local friend for a meal over our campfire. It’s quite fun to ‘host’. This time we cooked up Martin’s cheesy balls, spaghetti bolognaise and chocolate brownie pudding with chocolate custard.

Stoneywish has a nature reserve, but we’ve still never been to it!! This time we walked up the south downs and turned left, coming across the pleasant surprise of the pink pit stop – a drinks van with a customer portaloo! We then came back down through the agricultural college where we had our packed lunch in the churchyard and then back through the woods where we were treated to a wonderful display of bluebells. We had to get some good steps in as we were training for Isaacs Tea Trail in Northumberland… but more of that in due course!

L & R

PS thanks to our friend who has already replied and sent me a link to the fairylight birthday gift!

Harry, Larry & Barry

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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!

L & R

Nessie’s maiden voyage

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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!!

L & R

Mystery revealed

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It was a cube!!… with exciting attachments!!

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.

L & R

A mystery gift

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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!

L

Alice the camel has five humps

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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!!

R & L

Alice travels in style

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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.

R & L

Introducing Alice…

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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.

R & L

Betty’s kitchen

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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!

R