Friendly safety advice for ths seasons new campers

[Funtimewincies]

It's great when new people come to realise what we've known for ages, that camping is great fun for both adults and children .

However, every year there are sad stories about people seriously injured or killed because they didn't know/think to take simple precautions. I though that now might be a good time to bring to new campers' attention some of the important things that more experienced campers take for granted.

1. Please (no matter how crap the weather) don't cook inside your tent. Tents burn with frightening speed and gas/meths/charcoal, etc. fumes also need to be kept outside.

2. BBQs are dangerous even after you think that they've been extinguished. Don't take them into the tent to warm the tent up or because you're afraid that it'll get nicked. It's not worth the risk.

Please add your own in the spirit of camping solidarity and in the hope that it'll prevent avoidable accidents.

Don't let your children roam freely whilst pitching until you've checked the area. What may look like grass could well be a pond with lots of plants in. (DS1 last week).

Know what to do if there is a fire.

Have an extinguisher in your tent-- we take our car one in with us at night.

Make sure your handbrake is firmly on in the car/ van......obvious I know but we all aware that kids sometimes get in cars etc and fiddle when parents are drinking doing camping related jobs and aren't 100% paying attention to kids!

Good point Jammygal. The dc stay in the car with a snack while we put up the tent. Last year ds1 couldn't undo his own seatbelt. Now he can .

Take a Carbon monoxide alarm with you. Small and portable and can save your life.

Can I just add to Jammygals post - also remember to park in gear. I know most campsites are flat, but it doesn't take much of a hill for a car to roll. I saw an empty landrover roll across a few tents once at a festival - scary scary stuff.

If you are parked facing up an incline, please remember to park in first gear.
If you are facing down an incline, remember to park in reverse

PING Campaign here after a tragic accident.

Also adding to Jammygals post, don't leave the keys the car when kids are on their own inside. It sounds obvious but my otherwise-sensible friend recounts a horrifying tale of her son almost being decapitated by her car's electric window.

Fire Bucket.

Somewhere in your car you have room for a bucket. Ours sits between the passenger footwells in the back and holds various pens/wipes/snack bars/ dc paraphernalia while we are travelling. In a blink of an eye it can be transformed into a vomit travel bucket should the need arise.

On site it gets filled with water and then it sits next to the gas burner/Cobb wherever that may be.

ime if something catches fire tipping a bucket of water over it is the quickest and easiest and simplest thing you can do as a first response.

I also have an extinguisher and always find out where the fire points on the site are.

Bucket of water also v handy for quick treatment for burns.

Also useful overnight for keeping milk cold.

This sounds a bit extreme maybe but I have been thinking of sleeping with a knife close to me just in case of fire. It occurred to me it might be necessary to slash the tent walls to get out if the part near the tent exit was ever burning.

oranges lots of people do this. I think it's an extremely sensible thing to do if you cook in the porch area of your tent and that is your only exit route out.
I would think you would need to think about where you stored the knife during the day to make sure little fingers didn't get hold of it

Adding to Humpdibumps post (a lot of car related safety going on here) make sure you take the car out of gear before starting it. (remebering tales of the car lurching forward and hitting mostly lamp posts but also people, with nasty consequences) and like quenelle said, remove the keys.

One thing I often think is make sure your shower shoes are grippy enough. The number of times I've gone skidding across wet washroom floors in my cheap flipflops and I still haven't learnt.

Bumping after more sad news this weekend .

Hope those of you who camped this bank holiday had a good time .

C&CC, directgov and Fireservice advice

www.campingandcaravanningclub.co.uk/helpandadvice/camping-safety/carbon-monoxide-poisoning/

www.direct.gov.uk/en/HomeAndCommunity/InYourHome/Escapingandrecoveringfromafire/DG_180682

www.fireservice.co.uk/safety/barbecue

We will be cooking on a bucket BBQ or portable gas stove. Do I need a table or base of some sort? Goi.g to get a windbreak to cook behind (not too close) and a big umbrella should we need to cook in the rain. Does this sound ok?

Bucket BBQ will scorch the grass (which a lot of sites don't like) so you'll need something. I put our trangia (and bought a gas stove today too) on a table on a wooden chopping board [overkill emoticon] to keep it out of the reach of the dc.

Ok, thanks, will get a cheap wooden chopping board.

if possible turn off gas from mains when not in use, little fingers like to fiddle with turny things.
Keep handbags out of site, we were sadly robbed in the middle of the night while we slept :( very scarcy and my mum has never slept in a tent since :(

So does this mean we shouldn't be cooking on our kitchen unit in our trailer tent. Thought it was designed to cook inside?

Bumping for the weekend.

Bumpity bump :)

We had a chinese lantern last year - it's not something I'll be doing again.......

campingandcaravanningclub.co.uk/helpandadvice/camping-safety/carbon-monoxide-poisoning/

A repeated link, but important information so I make no apologies

campingandcaravanningclub.co.uk/helpandadvice/camping-safety/carbon-monoxide-poisoning/

FFS