My favourite campsite

Park House campsite at Monsal Head, Bakewell, Derbyshire. 

Really nice little campsite - it's a field next to an old farmhouse, with the showerblock built into one of the farm buildings. The showers are clean and hot. It's not all-singing-all-dancing, it's literally just a field, but there's great views of the countryside all around, and it's a two minute walk away from the Monsal trail - the view is SPECTACULAR! (And there's a pub and cafe there also).  It's cheap to camp, and the owners are welcoming. The only downside is the washing-up facilities - it's a sink outside, so a bit miserable washing up when it's cold or wet! Otherwise, great. Andy and I used to come up here on the weekends when we lived in Belper, either hiking the Monsal trail or biking to Bakewell.


John Ruskin wrote this about Monsal Dale valley: "There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell, once upon a time divine as the Vale of Tempe; you might have seen the Gods there morning and evening - Apollo and all the sweet Muses of the light - walking in fair procession on the lawns of it, and to and fro among the pinnacles of its crags." 

Camping checklist

So there's the usual stuff. Then there's things that can make camping just a bit more civilised:

• Bedding: we've found that the more layers of bedding you can put UNDER you to insulate you, then you'll be really warm even if you just have a quilt over the top of you. So we put down:

- foam roll mat
- thin travel mattress that we extracted from a pull-out sofa
- a duvet
- blanket
- sheet
THEN you
and a duvet on top.

• Fold-up chairs are good. Cause after a few days of sitting up straight, your back will be aching to lean back.

• Head-torch so that you can read in the tent hands-free, brush your teeth etc. without having to juggle a hand-torch
• Bright lantern for the tent, not a wind-up one - cause the light from wind-ups is really dim. More light at night = a happy camper
• Radio - cause stuff takes so much longer camping, and music definitely reduces my grumpy levels
• A small storage tent so you can have everything laid out and to hand, instead of trying to root for it in your pack or car
• A beanie/hat, cause a hat can cover a multitude of sins and bad camping hair. Unfortunately I have a winter hat that makes me look like a  loony person. Not cool when I just want to be casual and wear it round the campsite. 
• Platypus-type water container so you can go hiking and not have to keep taking your pack off for a drink
• Fold-up 1 litre water container so you don't have to keep trogging over to the water tap all the time
• Wind-up USB charger so you can wind up your camera and other items
• One of those canvas bags so you can take your stuff to the showerblock in something nice, not a common placcy bag
• Food that doesn't go mouldy easily - cheese, ham, choizo, granola, fruit, some of the german seeded bread in Lidl, UHT milk 

Mega speedy simple recipes

I hate cooking. My friend Jenny says "If it takes longer to make than it does to eat, then it's not worth it." This statement is a great cooking ethic to have, especially when camping.

Ok, so the following recipes are designed for this sort of scenario:
It's cold. It's windy. You've been walking/cycling all day, and now you're a little grumpy and fed-up. It's day 4 of camping. The tent flooded in night and you didn't get much sleep. You are starting to miss home. The feeling of warmth. You are getting grumpy. You think - is it even worth cooking the evening meal?

My answer is - YES! You will feel so much better. Ok, so some quick 10 minute recipes for evening meal:

1. Pasta. Pasta cooks in 10 minutes if you boil the heck out of it. Whilst you're waiting, put the radio on. Try to make it a nice experience. It's the journey as well as the destination.
Once the pasta is done, tip in some nice pasta sauce with big veggie chunks that you bought from a shop. (Cause it's not worth making your own pasta sauce. Yes it's cheaper, but it's more faff. Unless you make it up before you go camping). If your fellow camper is a carnivore, it may be kind to chuck in some bits of meat like chorizo or ham. If you're feeling adventurous, maybe grate some cheese over the top.

So ingredients are: Lots of pasta
Pasta sauce
Optional meat like chorizo or ham (stuff you can take with you all week that won't go off).
Cooking time = approx. 10 mins
Number of hobs used = 1 hob

If you want to push the boat out, you could make some bolognese before you go, and take it frozen. Eat it in the first couple of days, but it's good cause you can cook it whilst the pasta boils and it still takes about 10 mins. Although it's an extra thing to wash up :(

2. Rice. Again, rice takes 10 minutes to cook. Once it's  done, chuck in some rice sauce that you bought already. (Are you detecting a pattern here?). You could even be clever and buy the sauce with bits of meat in it already, then your carnivore husband will be happy.

3 Anything with the word 'instant' on it is good. E.g. 'instant' noodles.... 'instant' pasta.....Also look for 'just add water'. Also good. My favourite is the cheese pasta packets where you add some milk and water and stir for 7 minutes. It says that it serves 2 on the packet, but I think it only serves 1. I have learnt this the hard way.
(I know there's proper bonafide camping boil-in-the-bag stuff that you can buy from a camping shop, but in my experience it's expensive, heavy, and you can get a situation where the water doesn't sink down to the bottom of the bag so you get clumps of powdery food. For wild camping particularly when you've just got your trusty trangier and you're carrying your food, I think cheap instant pasta's good. Not so much noodles cause they don't fill you up as well).


4. When you've finished cooking the pasta/rice or whatever, put another pan of water on the stove to boil. Then you can have a nice civilised cup of tea and a cookie after you've eaten your dinner.

(I've yet to find any decent dessert recipes that are quick... the angel delight stuff tastes like soap. I think the best dessert cookie is a stroopwafel. You get your cup of tea and melt the stroopwafel over the top of the cup like so.  Really nice end to the meal!)

Isle of Wight festival

So I've been camping at the IoW festival a couple of times with friends. Both times we had scorching hot weather. We went the year Rolling Stones headlined, and the year Neil Young and Razorlight played. We had a lot of fun! But there's some stuff I would have done differently:
Ok, so what to take:

• Cheap tent that you don't mind getting a bit ruined. Because the following will probably happen: 

- Someone will spill beer in the tent
- Someone will vomit in the tent
- The tents are so crammed together that people trip over the guy ropes and fall onto other people's tents without meaning to. Especially when drunk. Do you really want a 6'3 stoner falling onto your tent in the dead of night? Well, no one wants that, but it will happen, and your tent will never be the same.
- If it's a bad year like last year, the tent will flood. If you don't dry it out after and provide some tent TLC, it will go mouldy.
-In conclusion - I took my own tent both times, it was a really nice one, an engagement present from my auntie. Although it has survived to tell the tale, that tent has seen things no tent ever should see. I stressed the whole time we were at the festival that it would blow away or collapse or get set on fire. (Well, I didn't exactly stress, but I did find myself thinking about it during The Prodigy set. Not cool).
(Note - I thought it was ok to leave tents behind cause they go to charity - but someone has kindly pointed out that the tents actually go to landfill - SO DON'T LEAVE YOUR TENT BEHIND!!)

• Now that you have your cheap tent, you must know how to recognise it in some way, as there are thousands of other cheap tents rammed into a field, and you don't want to get into the wrong one by accident. Or wander round lost for hours and then pass out near the toilets. I have seen this happen. So it's a good idea to put some string or some kind of identity marker on it. Nothing TOO obvious though - you don't want to draw attention to it too much in case someone comes along and flattens your tent. 

• Take a torch with you in order to identify said tent, and also to see where the guy ropes are so you don't trip over them. Well, you will trip over the guy ropes, but at least you should do it less often if you have a torch. And if you do fall, there's always other tents around to cushion your fall. 

• Everything takes twice as long. Seriously, the water taps were like a mile away. And I learnt this lesson the hard way - we decided to have a BBQ on the Saturday, but by the time we'd walked into the nearest town (which was like 45 mins away), bought stuff from the supermarket, walked back again, set it all up, got cooking, WE'D MISSED AMY WINEHOUSE!!!!

• In fact, don't worry about cooking stuff. It's a festival. Just buy stuff there. Yeah it's overpriced, but there's loads of variety to choose from. 

• But if you're like me (I get really cranky when hungry), pack lots of mars bars and snaffle them when your friends aren't looking. Cause when you've elbowed your way through the crowds so you're in spitting distance of the stage, you don't want to leave your spot unless you absolutely have to. And you will be there many hours.

• Oh yeah, and try and take cereal bars etc. for breakfast so you don't faff around with milk which you'll have to buy/carry/ and will get nicked/spilt/go off anyway. I took my pocket rocket (see previous post) so we could all have a cup of tea. 

• Wet wipes!!! Cause people chuck stuff during the concerts, and you hope it's beer but  let's face it, it's a plastic tumbler of wee. It's gross. So take wet wipes cause showering is out for the weekend. 

• Alcohol hand gel and toilet paper in your little rucksack cause the portaloos are...well...you can imagine. 

• Cards or connect4 or a book or something to do whilst you're sat waiting in between acts. Cause there's a lot of time waiting around.

• So you leave your tent mid-afternoon, and you don't return till the small hours of the morning. Whilst it may be scorching in the mid-day sun, it's pretty cold at 2am when it takes half an hour to walk back to your tent. So stuff a cardigan or poncho into your rucksack. Cause I really hate being cold! 

• Big rucksacks are good cause you'll be doing a lot of walking to and from ferry ports/train stations/bus stations. You don't want to try and lug a suitcase around a field. And then little day rucksacks are good for valuables, mars bars etc. 
• The first time we took the train down then hopped on the ferry, but the second time we drove and I left my car with this guy in Portsmouth as part of the parkatmyhouse scheme. Simples! 

Hope this helps! Does anyone have any other tips to add? 

My most valuable piece of kit

 The thing that I have found the most useful whilst camping is my pocket rocket. Such a simple, genius bit of kit. The pocket rocket is the metally bit that my husband is holding up. It screws onto a small gas canister, and then you put a saucepan on it.

Nice things about the pocket rocket:

• A civilised English person always starts the day with a cuppa - so perfect in the morning when you can't be bothered to get the stove out. Boils water in about 3 mins for 2 people. 
• I bought it initially for the Isle of Wight festival, and we made lots of instant noodles with it. 
• And cups of tea. 
• It really does fit in your pocket.
• It's cheap.
• Easy to use - just find a flat bit of ground. Or bring inside the tent if mega windy. 
• Actually, it's pretty much idiot-proof. You are very unlikely to blow yourself up with this. Simples! 

Hello and welcome

Greetings campers!

I like camping. Not the commercial 'glamping' where campers look like they've just stepped out of an outdoors magazine, but good old-fashioned honest camping, the kind the Famous Five did in their summer holidays with maybe the added addition of a car and a hot shower somewhere in the vicinity.

I want to be a happy camper, but so often on camping trips I get a little bit grumpy. (Lack of food, lack of warmth, lack of sleep etc.) And so over the years I have tried to critically analyse each camping trip - what made it good? What could make it even better?

I've done wild camping, festival camping, hiking trip camping and holiday camping. These are my thoughts on the stuff that worked and the stuff that didn't. I'd love to hear your advice and tips also!