BreakFree Holidays Top 10 Tips for relaxing Camping Holidays

The Guide

 

This one looks fine

Choose your pitch carefully. You may not want to be too close to the hubbub and traffic of the amenities and toilet/shower block but you also don’t want a half-mile hike every time one of the kids needs a leak.

Yes, the pitch next to the river might look the prettiest, but come a heavy rainfall you might find yourself stepping out of the tent into a marsh. Kids will find this hilarious. You, less so.

Are you not entertained?

Pick a campsite with amenities and facilities suitable for your family, but don’t worry too much if it’s not equipped like a major theme park. There’s a huge amount of novelty and fun for kids with just sleeping under canvas, cooking outside and exploring.

Told you we should have set off earlier

Try to arrive early enough to avoid pitching your tent in the dark (despite the claims of the ‘easy-pitch’ tents, pitching times can vary. Greatly). Keeping the kids occupied with helping fetch and carry, and maybe knocking in the odd tent peg (subject to safety briefing), will stop them wandering off before you are all familiar with your new surroundings.

Hitting the bottle

The gas bottle, that is. In the absence of hi-tech gizmos and gauges you can be a little more scientific than just tapping the bottle or sloshing it around to check your gas level: Pour a stream of hot water down the side of the gas bottle. Now run a finger down the side of the bottle where you poured the hot water: where the metal is relatively warm the bottle is empty, the point where it feels relatively cooler will be the gas level.

Keep your tent off the ground

Most tents come with their own groundsheet but buying a cheap tarpaulin to put on the ground before you pitch will mean all your tent stuff is dry and clean underneath when you pack it back in its bag, plus it will provide a bit of protection from sharp stones

Rubber shower shoes

Take flip-flops, crocs or any cheap alternative that you can slip on and off, to wear in the shower and to have handy at the tent entrance for when you need to take a loo trip in the middle of the night.

A spacious tent for longer camping trips

When it has rained for three days solid, you’ll know why.

Do bears, err, live in the woods?

The likelihood of bears stealing food that you’ve left out is remote in the UK but, believe us, in the dead of night a fox or badger going through your camp kitchen sounds very much like a bear.

What do you mean, you didn’t bring the xxxx?

There’s an endless list of nick-nacks and gadgets with which to impress your canvas neighbours, but arriving without the following can lead to some uncomfortable silences: corkscrew, can opener, waterproof-matches/lighter/fire-steel, torches, batteries (if you don’t have wind-up torches and radios), hand-sanitiser gel, ziploc bags, water container, cool box. Swiss-Army style penknives can often kill several of these birds with one stone, plus they have things like tooth picks and tweezers (handy for splinters etc).

If your campsite allows open fires you’ll probably want to take authentic fire-making equipment. Fire-steels are an indispensable bit of kit for the hunter-gatherers out there, and a wad of cotton wool dipped in Vaseline works brilliantly as a firelighter/kindling – it will ignite from a spark immediately. Not as authentic as dead leaves and bits of bark, perhaps, but still demonstrates a bit of frontier spirit. Tumble-dryer lint also makes for excellent kindling – and you thought you’d never find a use for it!

I’m cold

Advice on sleeping bag thickness and quality is endless, and the choice you make may influence your choice of mattress, but it’s worth considering that lilo-type inflatable beds don’t necessarily provide the same insulation as a foam roll-mat or self-inflating mattress.

Worth also remembering that sleeping kids roll about in tents (they can travel remarkable distances in our experience) so may be advisable to wedge them between something hefty, like adults or bags, to stop them waking up cold on the tent floor in the middle of the night.

 

 

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