What to pack to make your camping trip the best trip!
Camping can be a great way to spend quality time with your loved ones as well as a way to feel more grounded and relaxed. Escaping to the woods or countryside is an amazing way to forget about all the stress and worries of your day to day life but without some of these camping essentials, you may be feeling more tensed than at one with nature. Make sure you have all of these essentials to make your camping trip the best experience possible!
The Basics
There are some basics you should always pack when going camping the usual things like a tent, sleeping bags, pillows, blankets, flashlights and TOILET ROLL! Some of these things you can glam up to make your experience of sleeping in the wilderness a bit better such as an air mattress, a cool tent with walkways and different rooms, lanterns and other more comfortable accessories.
You need to remember to bring cooking utensils that you know how to use such as throwaway bbq’s, portable cookers or stove. Also don’t forget to bring things like pots or pans if you plan on cooking as well as cutlery, a kettle, gas or charcoal for the cookers, tin openers, matches and a coolbox. You should also bring bin bags to clean up the site when you are leaving.
I emphasised the importance of toilet roll as you definetely do not want to be wiping with leaves half way through your trip, a good way to know how much toilet roll to pack is to keep track of how many toilet rolls you go through in the same amount of time you are going away for. You may also find it helpful to pack a portable toilet if you’re travelling with women or children.
You need to bring any medications your party take as well as extras such as paracetamol or ibuprofen in case of injury, you need to bring a first aid kit, suncream, antibacterial wash, a pocket knife just in case and insect repellent. All of these things are important for the health and safety of your party.
Bring food that has a long use by date and that can be cooked quickly and easily in a pan or portable cooker, don’t forget snacks and bottled water! BQQ foods are good if you have a portable cooler as you can cook them on the campfire.
Campfire Essentials
If you plan on building a campfire you’ll need to bring a few things to make it look the best. If you can before the trip buy some quick light logs, these are sometimes available at petrol stations or large supermarkets, you will also need kindling or scrunched up newspaper (this is to help light the fire), a small hatchet to help cut up firewood and any spare lightable’s that will burn well in wind. It is also useful to buy a large wind guard for your campfire especially if you plan on cooking on it as you do not want the wind to put it out easily.
Other campfire essentials are the obvious marshmallow, biscuit and chocolate combo with kabab sticks to make smores, if you don’t want to use kabab sticks (as they do burn easily) you can buy some metal skewers, make sure they only have plastic on the handle as this will melt. Make sure you bring some portable chairs to sit on as the ground is definitely not very comfortable.
How to make a great campfire
To make the best-looking campfire first you should collect some medium sized rocks from around your camp (this task is great fun with kids, almost like a treasure hunt but with rocks instead) once collected place them in a large-ish circle (make this as big or as small as you would like as this will be the size of the fire), collect your firewood and bring out your kindling or newspaper.
Put small sticks mixed with kindling and newspaper inside the stone circle, start to place the firewood on top of the layer of kindling and sticks, don’t over pack it yet and make sure all wood is dry. Start to light the kindling underneath the logs and start to blow on it gently. If some of the logs are taking a while to light add extra kindling and light it close to the log. Add a few logs every now and again but don’t over do it as the fire will become out of hand and dangerous, it’s important when lighting a fire in a woodland setting that you keep it small and contained as it could be disastrous if out of hand. Now you can enjoy smores and sing some songs!
The Luxuries
Simple camping may be great for some but if you want some of the normal luxuries you use day to day you need to pack some extras. If you can’t bear the thought of going more than an hour without your phone it’s pretty important you remember to bring portable chargers. Don’t stock up on cheap supermarket portable chargers as they take a long time to charge fully and they die pretty quickly, instead buy one good large portable charger with multiple inputs for the whole party, they may be a little expensive but are well worth the money and are a great investment. If you don’t want to invest in this you can get some great solar panel portable chargers.
Buy some comfortable portable seating, a Bluetooth speaker, a portable propane heater, a waterproof phone case, a portable hammock to relax in and some games to entertain you (you can even bring some movie equipment if you would rather watch something)
A lot of people are put off from camping due to the fact there are no showers and if there are they’re usually VERY cold and not very private, this can all be changed with a few items. For a hot shower, you can buy portable water heating machines with shower heads and suction pumps that will suck up water from any type of source. For privacy, you can buy tents that allow you to clean yourself in peace with no peeping toms (you can even buy some with an extra ‘drying’ room allowing you to dry yourself in peace too!) you can also keep your portable toilet in a shower tent for a private bathroom.
If you have some of these items ticked off your list you should be ready to have an amazing camping trip!