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.
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.
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.
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!
Last time we went camping together we were fortunate to manage to pick a dry, sunny weekend – although the nights were a little chilly reminding us it was autumn.
We revisited a favourite campsite – Hale Farm. We hadn’t been for a few years, partly as we have to drive past some of our other favourites to get there, and party because it is often fully booked! The facilities had been improved since we last stayed, so we updated our review.
There are good footpaths for walking straight from the campsite. We had hoped to call in at the nearby cafe & village shop on the way home, but for some reason it shuts early on a Saturday!
It’s a great site for taking children as the farm is open each morning to visit the animals. There is something therapautic about stroking a friendly donkey! The farmer also sells lamb burgers, sausages and eggs – we purchased some burgers, but they are still in the freezer so we can’t give you a proper review of those yet!
What we can review are Martin’s cheesy balls!! You might remember this was a recipe picked up from a fellow camper Martin whilst on a road trip. Well, we’re pleased to report that they turned out to be very tasty! They worked well as a starter while we waited for our main of pulled lamb to slowly cook on the fire.
Here’s the recipe:
Martin’s cheesy balls
Ingredients:
Torn bread, egg, grated cheese, finely chopped garlic
Method:
Mix everything together and leave to soak. Shape into golf balls and fry in oil.
They will be crispy on the outside but soft and squishy inside.
Having survived my first road trip, I set about planning a bigger one – to Keswick in the Lake District.
The first night was a halfway stop over near Lichfield. I stayed in Cosy Nook campsite. It was indeed tucked away in a little nook – effectively in someones back garden! When I arrived, I wasn’t sure I was in the right place and pulled in across the road and rang because I didn’t want to run the risk of actually pulling into someones driveway!!
As I arrived fairly late and I was only there one night, I kept it simple. No awning and I slept up top in the roof bed, so I could have my little Boxio toilet in the downstairs. I had a nice pitch by the gate into the adjoining woods, but given I didn’t know the area I was pleased to be sleeping in Van-nessa and to be able to lock her doors.
The campers next to me were actually very friendly. A couple who lived nearby, but liked to escape in their motorhome. The husband seemed to be a bit of a gourmet and I enjoyed chatting to him about food. He shared with me his recipe for cheesy balls, so I’ll look forward to trying them out some time!
After a morning walk in the woods, I hit the road again. I was unimpressed to have to pay the M6 toll again – not good planning to break my journey halfway down it! Especially as Nessie wasn’t classified as a ‘car’ and had to pay more!!! (I spent most of my first experience on the toll road wondering how it worked and whether I would have to self-select my vehicle type and if so what the classifications were. In someways I was quite relieved that the toll booth decided for me what I had to pay, but shame it decided she was expensive!)
Terrible traffic on the M6, but it was made more fun when I spotted another NV200 with a pop top roof. He’d pass me, then I’d overtake him & he’d overtake me. Entertained me for quite a while! The driving north of Manchester got much more pleasant – quiet roads and nice views.
I arrived at the campsite to discover my ‘super service’ pitch was near the lakeside and have lovely views to the hills. However I hadn’t realised it was a fully hardstanding pitch – and I only had 4 metal pegs with me! Fortunately I’d arrived in time to rush to the nearest camping shop before it closed for a whole box of Gorilla pegs.
The other issue with the gravel hardstanding was that although I had mats down throughout the awning I could still feel the stones through which made kneeling down uncomfortable. I’d planned to sleep in Barry the bedroom so that I didn’t need to put my bed away each morning, but I only had a thin blanket to put over the groundsheet and below my sleeping mat. Then I had a brainwave – the bed boards from the pop up roof are cushioned. I made a little sleeping platform inside the awning and had a lovely soft surface to kneel and sit on.
The weather in Keswick was perfect – warm and sunny every day. The shallows of the lake were the temperature of bath water for paddling in! I’d time my adventure to coincide with the Keswick Convention so I enjoyed attending the evening meetings each day and going to some of the seminars. I had a few friends who were also at the convention that week, and they were all super kind in making sure they included me. What I had expected to be a solo trip was actually pretty sociable! Particularly I enjoyed going on some walks with my friend Helen and her family exploring a bit more of the local area, including a boat ride to walk round the other side of the lake.
After sociable 5 night stay in Keswick, I found it really hard to hit the road again on my own. On the last morning the thought of packing everything away on my own felt overwhelming, and the idea of driving off on my own into the hills felt very lonely. It wasn’t helped by the fact that having pack up, I left my bags of rubbish by my van while I popped into town quickly. By the time I was back the seagulls had pulled it all apart and spread it all over my pitch – yuck!!
I took the scenic route south through the Lake District, which was beautiful. I stopped in Ambleside for a coffee, but it was heaving. My learning point for next time is to plan something specific for the way home. That worked well on my first road trip where I visited the cave houses. This time, by the time I was on the road and started thinking of it, I didn’t know where to go nor whether I had enough time to fit it into my journey.
I felt super sleepy on the second part of the drive and I knew I had to stop as soon to keep safe. I pulled off at the next services, but at the junction saw a sign for a nursery, so I went there instead. I parked up in their car park and had an actual snooze followed by an enjoyable mootch round the shop. The cafe looked lovely but I was still feeling full of cake from my last stop. Much nicer than the services would have been, I’m sure.
I learnt from my M6 toll experience last time and had planned a different campsite to break the journey on the way home. I stayed at Springslade Lodge in Cannock Chase. It was a lovely sunny evening and I arrived in good time, so I put just Harry and Harriet up – using Harriet as a mini-bathroom. I was very flattered when the man from the camping group next to me said he’d been impressed how quickly I’d got everything set up!
For the amount I’d had to pay, I wasn’t impressed by the facilities. Sadly the cafe at the site wasn’t open the following morning, so I set off promptly planning to get brunch at my first stop. After the previous day’s success I decided to stop at another garden centre and found Bicester Avenue Garden Centre about the right distance away. This one turned out to be very different to the nursery – it was more of a shopping complex with various other stores as well as a huge garden centre. It made for a proper break though as I wandered round the shops (and made some purchases!) as well as eating in the restaurant.
Then there was just one more leg of driving before arriving home safely after my longest adventure to date!
I’ve got a bit behind with my blogging as I haven’t told you all about Nessie’s first road trip!! It involved 3 nights camping and 1 night at a friend’s house.
The first leg was to a drive to near Tewkesbury where I’d booked into the Winchcombe Camping and Caravanning site. Given that it was my first long drive with Nessie, I wanted to book a campsite with good facilities, where I knew what to expect.
The campsite was nice. It has good facilities (even music playing in the toilet block, which confused me at first!!) and is attractively arranged around a fishing lake. My pitch wasn’t by the lake, but it did have views to the hills.
The first challenge was to get the awning up on my own – not helped by the fact that it was pretty windy. Harry was a bit jumpy, but fortunately a kind man in a neighbouring caravan came to my aid. Another friendly camper was chatting to me later and warned me that her new (& expensive) awning had got ruined the previous night. I decided not to take any chances and put the storm-straps on – these are additional guy ropes for Harry and then Harriet had ones that go right over the van and get pegged down on the other side. I was relieved when we all survived the night with no damage.
The following morning I set off on a drive which I thought was going to be a couple of hours long… but 2 hours in, I stopped for lunch, with 2 hours still to go!! Highlight of an otherwise tedious drive was going over the spectacular & relatively new Mersey Gateway Bridge, which I’d not crossed before.
Eventually I got to my friends house where I was able to refuel with a cuppa before setting off with her to our next campsite…which was accessed via crossing a ford! Primrose cottage campsite was a simple site. Nice enough, but with one draw back – you could hear the motorway. It was the sort of sound that became background noise, so it didn’t disturb us, but I was disappointed that I could hear it.
After a good night’s sleep and bacon sandwiches for breakfast, we managed to beat the rain in getting Barry, Larry and Harry down. On our way back we pottered leisurely around via Rufford Old Hall (a National Trust property) and the coast, and that evening I had the luxury of sleeping in the house!
The following morning was Sunday so we went to Christ Church Liverpool for the morning service and then, after lunch, I hit the road again. Once more, problems on the roads led to me being re-routed. Around 4.30 I needed to be somewhere with wifi to make a video call – and I saw a sign to an Ice Cream Farm . I was expecting a farm shop, maybe some cows – but I appeared to have entered what looked like a teletubby world of adventure play and ice cream parlours! A very strange place to stumble across, but I enjoyed a pistachio ice-cream while I called my familly.
The rest of the drive to Wolverley Campsite was nice, but quite tiring. I was at my end when I arrived and couldn’t cope with the simple decisions the nice campsite man wanted me to make about which pitch and which way round I wanted to park etc! Fortunately he was kind and patient. It was another nice site and a sunny evening, so once I’d got set up I enjoyed a relaxing time eating my dinner and enjoying a glass of wine.
The site is right by a canal, so the following morning I took my mug of tea for a stroll along the bank. I then packed up and went on a mission to find the cave houses at Kniver, which a colleague had recommended to me. I enjoyed taking a look round, learning about the lives of the people who used to live there, tucking into a scone & cream and listening to the bird song in the woodland.
And then it was back on the road again! I stopped for a break at some services on the M40 – and I couldn’t resist parking next to another little campervan. Turned out to be another female solo camper, so we had a fun chat exchanging stories and tips.
This road trip is the most driving I’ve ever done in my life! But having survived, I’ll look forward to telling you about more of Nessie’s adventures soon!
Recently I braved my first solo trip with Nessie. I took the opportunity to work out of the office in Basingstoke & afterwards stayed a night camping near Micheldever.
I’d forgotten how long things like checking tyre pressure can take on a new vehicle, but important to be safe. Fortunately the traffic was good & I wasn’t late for work. And I enjoyed showing her off to my colleague at lunchtime!!
The campsite wasn’t as hard to find as the instructions implied and it was a quiet site with just one other camping party. The site overlooked a stream & water meadow, so when I arrived I enjoyed relaxing with an after-work cider while watching the bird life.
I set up the inflatable awning just as the drizzle started and then tried a new recipe for dinner of beef barley. For pudding I attempted a stove top cake. (I’ll share the recipes once they are perfected).
The evening soon disappeared & it was time for bed. My plan had been to sleep in the roof and have the new toilet downstairs …but the new toilet didn’t arrive in time! Fortunately there was a flush toilets on site not too far from my van, so it wasn’t a disaster.
I decided to sleep up top anyway to try out the bed boards and I slept fairly well up there. In the morning I went for a pretty walk to Stoke Charity past a lake & some former watercress beds.
I had a coffee back at the van before it was time to pack up. I was relieved to discover I could pack down the awning by myself without too much difficulty. Bonus treat, the campsite owner kindly packed me off with some rhubarb from his garden.
Here’s where I stayed Winchester Watermeadow and here’s my review.
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!!
We’ve a new addition to our camping family – Van-nessa, or Nessie for short!
She joined us at the weekend and we’re enjoying getting to know her. She is a CamperCar – a converted Nissan NV200. She’s very easy to drive – well once you’ve got used to not being able to see in the rear-view mirror that is! You’re high up so you get a lovely view of the world. She’s also easy to park as she is no longer or wider than many cars (and smaller than some of the large cars on my street!).
So far our adventures have been limited to stopping in nice places on our way home, boiling up cups of tea for friends and last night driving to have fish’n’chips with a view… but we are looking forward to many more. And we’ll be sure to tell you about them!
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!
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.
Embrace your inner goat 