car camping

Tips for keeping cool camping

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Camping is a nice thing to do in a heat wave, but it can need some careful planning to keep your food and drinks cool all weekend. Here are some tips:

  • pre-cooling. Use your fridge at home to thoroughly chill your drinks so that they really cold before putting them in your cool box
  • separate bar box. You need to keep drinking to stay hydrated, but every time you open your cool box some coldness gets out and some warmth gets in. Have two cool boxes – one for drinks and other items you want to access regularly and another for food which you are trying to keep cold for as long as possible.
  • ice bucket. In addition to putting frozen ice packs in your cool box, add a bag of party ice. It will melt to become cool water, but unlike air it won’t escape every time you open the box
  • frozen towel. Cover your ice box with a damp towel which has been frozen. This will melt and slowly dry out, but the evaporation will help keep it cool and it’s another layer of insulation too.
  • reflect the heat. I haven’t tried this one, but covering your cool box in something reflective will help keep the heat out
  • bring frozen supplies. Keeping food safe is very important – no one wants a tummy upset on a campsite!! Plan your menu and for the dishes you are having later in your trip freeze the meat. Cutting up the meat first can be a good idea, as if your cooling has worked well it may still be frozen when you come to cook it! Small bits will defrost quickly. Cooking large pieces from frozen runs the risk of the middle not cooking properly, but tiny pieces will defrost as they hit the pan and cook through safely.
  • bring frozen drinks. You could take with you some bottles of frozen water, which will initially act like ice packs, but can also be enjoyed as a cool drink. Remember water expands when it freezes so don’t fully fill the water bottles.

Hope these tips help you have an enjoyable camping trip in the hot sunny weather this summer.

R

Nessie’s all hot and bothered

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What could be nicer in a heat wave to go camping? That’s what we thought last weekend – especially as Nessie had been fitted with a new leisure battery, so we were hopeful of ice cubes in our drinks and maybe even some choc ices!!

We decided to go back to Hook Farm campsite as it is a an attractive site if you end up spending most of your time lying in the shade with a book. We hadn’t been there since August 2021 and it was nice to reminisce about our many previous happy trips there as we drove down the familiar roads.

Various shaped tents including a gazebo and a toilet tent pitched in long grass with trees surrounding.
A previous trip to Hook Farm

One of the things that makes the campsite attractive is the undulating nature of the site. Unfortunately that has a couple of downsides – one is that it’s hard to find a flat pitch, you just have to accept that everything will roll off the table and that you’ll slide down your tent in the night! Fortunately we have some little wooden wedges we keep in the bag with our Primus stove, so at least our cooking was safe! We have previously purchased some non-slip table mat stuff, but being as we hadn’t used it in years it was no longer in our camping box, so we didn’t have it with us!

I arrived first in Nessie, so it was my job to choose a pitch. I took it very seriously considering where the sun would rise and set, and which trees would give shade earliest. I was careful not to drive down any steep tracks given the experience of the other goat a previous time when the ground was damp and we nearly had to call the farmer to be pulled out as her wheels spun and spun in the mud!! However, even with my caution, I still got into trouble, as poor Nessie could not do any sort of gradient at all over the bumpy grass! There was one bit where I’d tried everything I could think of – reversing, a less steep bit of slope, low gear, and her wheels just kept spinning. I was going to give up and cry when a grannie came over and suggested to me a way I could reverse out onto the track. Fortunately her advice worked and once we were on the track again we were ok. I had located what I thought was the best spot, but sadly there was just no way Nessie could get there, so I drove back to the gate and waited for the other goat to arrive.

Fortunately there was a nice area by the gate where no one else was camping yet, so we decided to leave Nessie where she was and camp in that part of the field. Being as the weather was boiling, I slept in the awning (Barry) without it being attached to the van. You wouldn’t want to do it in rainy weather, but actually it was nice to see a view of the moon out the door and to wake up to a view of the clouds and trees.

We tried a new set up to try to make some shade. Our tarp skills aren’t very good, but we were pleased that it lasted all weekend. We used the shepherds hooks which worked better than tent poles as we could mallet them into the ground.

A fawn coloured square tarp casting shade over two camping chairs and atttached to a black gazebo tent.
Our tarp set up to make shade

We did very little on Saturday other than go for wander in woods and take a walk round the site to look at everyone else’s set up. There was lots of wildlife to see & hear on the site – a red kite, lots of butterflies, grasshoppers & crickets, song birds, but best of all was our sighting of a family of weasels as they scurried along the hedgerow! Neither of us had ever seen weasels before, so it was a real treat.

Sadly the new battery didn’t do the trick and the fridge died before the weekend was out. Fortunately we had other ways of keeping things cool … but another post to follow on that.

Sunday we packed with trepidation hanging over us – would Nessie make it up the steep drive?! First attempt she wasn’t happy as two wheels were on grass, but with a bit more reversing we managed to get all four wheels, on to the dirt track, put her in low gear and she made it!!

Poor nessie, this wasn’t her favourite camping trip!

L & R

This goat has wheels

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You already know that goats like to camp in style, but last week I was super brave and not only tried out campervanning for the first time, but also did my first night of lone camping.

The advantage of a van is that you can lock the doors, so it gives an added feeling of security to camping on your own. Driving this van was actually quite easy and it’s not actually any bigger than a big-ish car. I tried it out in a couple of car parks as well as on country lanes and dual carriageways. It’s an NV200 and hired from Sussex Campervans… I’m very tempted to get my own one!

I tried sleeping in the top bunk the first night and the main bed the second night. Sleeping up top would take some getting used to, but down below I slept very comfortably. I stayed at Riverside Farm Campsite. It was a lovely location by the river, but I felt it was overpriced for what it was.

The first night I tried out a new recipe and cooked it in the van – mushroom risotto. Very tasty. For pudding I had one of those little individual pots of fruit salad. The photo is of the second night when I cooked Rowbury Lamb stew over the fire for dinner – also very tasty!

L

The new camping season has begun!

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The new camping season has arrived! So we thought it was time to try a new campsite – Sussex Topiary Campsite near Horsham.

The first question when we arrived is where is the topiary? There are trees, but we couldn’t see any pretty shaped ones!  The second question was where’s Reception?! The first place we tried turned out to be a derelict shed! Turns out there’s a house amongst the static caravans that’s the Reception.

We arrived on a sunny day, but it had rained all week so the camping field was very boggy. Instead we were given a hard standing pitch.

The hard standing pitch was gravel and it was good as it meant we didn’t get muddy.  However, we don’t have any hard standing pegs! We made do with what we had, but it was hard work to hammer them in with the mallet… and once they were in they didn’t necessarily stay there!  When hammering the plastic pegs from our Kampa tent (AKA Alice) I managed to split one of them in two right down the middle!!

Needless to say we were the only tent on the site! There were half a dozen caravans who looked like they might be fairlly long-term residents.  The caravan next to us had a good set up with a nice awning. Our neighbours on the other side weren’t doing so well & had keeled over!!


We didn’t use all of Alice’s humps, just the maim tent & the vestibule door. But we were still able to have a bedroom each, a palatial en suite in the middle hump and a kitchen area in the vestibule. The vestibule was just big enough for a kitchen table with our stove, two chairs & a coffee table. It was just as well, because it rained overnight & all the following morning!!


The site is well located to access footpaths so on the Saturday afternoon (when it wasn’t raining) we went for a walk to build our appetite for dinner. The Downs Link path is nearby and is a good path using what looks like an old railway track. Sadly the track back to the campsite wasn’t so good. A bit muddy, turned to very muddy…and then to completely flooded quagmire! There was no way I could get through in my walking shoes, but the other goat had her wellies on, so she sloshed through to look for alteratives. I thought she’d disappeared completely, but she eventually reappeared having found an alternative route – through a field & over an electric fence!!!

Sunday morning we hunkered down in tent waiting for the rain to stop and enjoying the slower pace of life that camping enforces. When the rain stopped we moved to sitting outside by a fire waiting for the tent to dry.

I was really pleased that even though Alice is made of fabric, she dried out pretty quickly. I’d packed towels so we we were able to wipe down the remaining wetness on her windows to pack her away. I bought her with a seperate footprint groundsheet so that means the bottom of the tent stays clean & dry for packing away.

Overall we feel much refreshed for our trip and excited that the camping season has returned. The campsite is in need of some TLC in terms of cleaning & upkeep, but has potential…we’ll share our scores soon.

R

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