tents

The new camping season has begun!

/ embraceyourinnergoat / 3 Comments

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

/ embraceyourinnergoat / 1 Comment

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

/ embraceyourinnergoat / Leave a comment

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…

/ embraceyourinnergoat / 3 Comments

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

Give a tent for Lent

/ embraceyourinnergoat / Leave a comment

On our chillier camping trips, as we wrap ourselves in our many layers, hug our hot water bottles and snuggle into our warm sleeping bags, we often think about people who are sleeping in tents every night, not by choice, but because there is no other option. We generally conclude that much as we love camping with all our accessories, we’d make pretty rubbish refugees!

In light of those conversations, this charity appeal caught our eye: Give a tent for Lent .

Particularly in the lead up to Easter, we are aware that we have been blessed with so much – so it seemed a fitting thing to do to help provide a tempory home for a family who find themselves needing to live in a tent!

L & R

Hello from a field

/ embraceyourinnergoat / 2 Comments

Camping season has begun!!We are currently enjoying coffee & cake by a fire to take off the chill in the air.

The we managed to get the tent up before the rain, and it stopped to enable us to go for a walk & cook dinner on the fire last night. However everything is muddy! Good job we packed our wellies!!

It wasn’t too cold overnight…especially if you have double thermals on, carpets & down sleeping bags.

Last time we camped at Pit Hill we brought the spaceship & camped light using Betty’s boot as our kitchen. This time we brought Alice & camped in style!

More about who Alice is another time…

R & L

Pitching in the wind

/ embraceyourinnergoat / Leave a comment

When we arrived at Stockbridge View recently, not only was the weather cold, it was very windy. We thought it might be helpful to share our tips for pitching in the wind:

  • choose your location well. We are actually notoriously bad at this, we always want to pitch for the best view – usually the windiest spot on the top of the hill. We are slowly learning that sometimes it is wiser to forego the view and pitch in the shelter of a hedge or wall.
  • consider your angle. You probably want to try to pitch streamlined, especially if your tent is long and thin. Put the lower bits of the tent into the wind to guide the air over the tent rather than to buffet it. You don’t want to put your door into the wind – if you do the wind will come in when you open the door and lift your tent up like a kite. Pitching with your back to the wind also means that you can sit in your tent doorway and enjoy the shelter of your tent.
  • where will the fire go? Fires are an essential part of the camping experience, but in the wind you have to be a bit careful. Firstly you need to think about which way the wind will blow the flames. A gust can make the flames lick out quite far. You need to be a safe distance from your tent which is highly flammable! Of course the wind can also make lighting the fire difficult, so locating the firepit down wind of the tent, might make it easier to light as well as making sure the flames blow away from the tent. Bizarrely as well as being hard to light fires in the wind, it is also hard to get them properly out. A strong wind during the night can relight embers that looked like they were dying. In windy conditions knocking a fire out isn’t enough, always add water too.
  • make full use of guys. Sometimes it’s tempting not to use all the peg holes and guy ropes, but in the wind you really need to. Your tent was probably designed to withstand a bit of wind, but they were assuming you put it up as per the instructions! Guy ropes should be pegged out and then tightened. On normal tents, tighten as much as you can. On inflatable tents, it’s possible to overtighten and bend the poles out of shape – moderately tight should be fine.
  • pick good pegs. Our favourites for the wind are delta pegs . We put a few on the key guy ropes of each tent. If you are using normal metal pegs, angle them into the ground – if they form a continuation of the line of your guy rope, they are the wrong way round, they need to be pointing in towards your tent and roughly forming a 90 degree angle with your guy rope. Especially if the ground is soft try to get the pegs all the way in. If you can get the hook bit down onto the ground it will help stop it spinning round and the guy rope breaking free. There are also various v-shaped pegs available which stop the pegs from doing this. A mallet is an essential tool for getting a tent up firmly. A peg-puller might also be needed to get it down again!
  • weight your tent down. You can also help your tents stability by thinking where you put your heavier items inside the tent. If the wind is tending to get under a particular corner, maybe that’s the location for your suitcase or coolbox or whatever other weighty items you have.
  • know your limits. If your camp arrangement becomes unsafe, be sensible about when you need to put the fire out or retreat to your car.

Hope you have a safe camp trip & don’t get blown away.

R & L

Bell tents aren’t only for camping!

/ embraceyourinnergoat / Leave a comment

In our last post we confessed that we hadn’t camped as much as we’d like to last summer, but that our tent had been up to other things. Turns out bell tents aren’t only useful for camping in…

One of the goats had the honour of being her sister’s bridesmaid this summer and with that came responsibilities for a hen party. With the help of a party decorator Sandy the Bell Tent and Gary the Gazebo were transformed into a stylish venue for a garden hen party!

R & L