New to camping and being a bit thick, what exactly does an electric hook-up on site give you?

[Fimbo]

I.e. can you just plug your electrical items straight in or do you need some special sort of cable?

You need a cable,one end goes in the electricity box thingy on the campsite and the other has a plug socket on the end that goes in your tent.

YOu need a special cable that costs £££. Its water proof. One end is um...special (different adapter) and the other end has normal 3 pin socket(s) for you to plig kettle/hairdryer etc into

plug*

Ah thank you both. I was being irrationable thick as I assumed the campsite provided the whole thing and you just whizzed up with your appliances. Thank you very much.

I just got back from a trip this afternoon, we are camping novices and went for the hookup because i was worried about being cold (there are three of us out of six that are asthmatic) and we had to buy a quite expensive mains hookup cable (and we bought a heater from outwell with safety cut out) it was luxury

Just a word of warning, you cant plug any old electrical thingy in, for instance you cant take your kettle from home as its only a 9amp hookup (i think ) so you have to get hold of a lower ampage kettle, fire ect. You can plug in your mobile phone and stuff like that though (we did)

Personally i loved it because last night it was blowing a gale and tipping down but we were all cosy and snug inside thank goodness so there is alot to be said for EHU i reckon

If you can borrow one you will see how much you use it or not before you fork out for one. They were on offer at Go Outdoors for £30 last w/e but they had all gone by the time we made it there!

We plugged our kettle into the one we borrowed. AFAIK everything you plug in at home has the same voltage doesn't it?

I merrily plugged everything into mine when I went, including my electric fan heater all night

I dont think it does, the bloke in go outdoors told me i needed a lower wattage kettle mind you he might have just been trying to get a sale.

Wilts i left mine on all night, it was lovely and cosy.

Gosh I would have just plugged everything in! Typical we bought everything last week that we needed to go this weekend (scorching - 30 degrees here!) then dh hurt his knee. Now the campsite we want to go to is only taking weekly bookings from next weekend until the end of August we live about 45 mins away and only wanted to go for a couple of nights. Bah!!!

We use our EHU for electic coolbox and for lighting mainly but we do charge mobile phones/ipod etc in it too. Also we have a hologen heater for when its chilly.
Some sites are better for electric than others, we have been on sites where kettles etc have blown the electric so we have a whistling kettle on the stove.
Oh and we also use hairdryer and straighteners in it.

Sagacity - noooo!!
The £30 hookup was actually an ordering mess up in stores - they never got any in. The guy let me have the £60 one for £30 as it was an ordering fault.

Does anyone have any recommendations for electricy goods to take?

Ooooh makes me feel better that i didn't miss it then Lunavix!

we just took our normal kettle, electric fan heater, eleccy light...... we only really used the ellecy to blow up our airbeds with the leccy blow up thing and we did have the kettle on but besides that we did not really need it imho but then we did only go for 2 nights!

Lunavix - the store at Coatbridge had hundreds on Saturday, all priced at £30 (down from £100) I bought one and there was no indication or suggestion of an ordering fault.