Travel cot for camping with baby?

[papillonrouge]

Hi, about to buy a travel cot for weekend away in a cottage but want one that will work for summer camping trips too. Is it best to get a traditional style one or one of the mini tent affairs? In fact, do any of you bother with travel cots at all? I actually imagine co-sleeping best for camping to keep LO warm but we have never co-slept with DS and not sure he would settle and worried we'd keep waking each other up? He will be about 10/11 months the first time we go camping.

We have a Littlelife Arc 2, tent style travel cot and find it great. Once you are used to it it is quick to put up (though you do need a bit of room as the poles are quite long). DD (now 15 months but camping since 6 or 7 months) sleeps well in it and we usually put her beside our self-inflating mats. Because the Arc 2 has an opening on the side as well as on the top, it means we can leave this open and slide over to her and give her a cuddle if she wakes in the night without having to get her or ourselves out of bed. It does mean the mattress is on the ground though so we often put a sheepskin (from IKEA) on top of the mattress and under her sheet to block any cold from the ground.

We also use the arc 2 when we go away to cottages and other places and it has been fine. As it packs up quite compact compared to a regular travel cot it takes up a lot less space in the car.

There are pop up travel cots available now though which you might want to consider too - I think I might have gone for one of those if we hadn't already got the Littlelife one.

We have a Nomad and I absolutely love it. Used it for my 3 DDs, in fact, DD3 is asleep in it now (I use it as a day bed in our room). It's like her little place in there, and takes up so little space.

And after using it for 7 years, it still looks spotless.

Ours have always slept on airbeds, even at 8 weeks, if you don't want to co-sleep Junior Kampa Beds are great.

second arc2 as being good, not ideal for in the tent (unless you have a whopper of a tent) imo we had a shortened mattress we could put in it for added warmth/ padding. Is ideal for naps and having a safe place for them to play.
Samsonite do a 'bubble' pop up cot which is lovely if you've got a smaller baby.

We co slept in the small 3man tent, giving the babe a slightly higher mattress (we use thermarests not traditional air mattresses as we find them warmer) so we were sure not to roll (well I was certain I wasn't going to, didn't trust dh) this works particularly well if you're bf too.
Biggest trouble with camping with the lo is the noise of other campers we found. People coming in at weird hours, shining lights on the tents walls disturbed her A LOT. We never solved this until we got a 'van.

the arc2 is also nice for in hotels/travelling on planes as it's very light weight!

Given bebe's good point about the arc2 and smaller tents, just to give you an idea, we used ours in a Decathlon 4.1 pop up last summer and it fitted in the bedroom no problem next to both our double low up mattress and our double self inflating mattress (not at the same time, of course). Not much room to spare though, I must admit. I guess if you have a family tent it will depend on the sizes of the bedrooms.

(I am presenthunter btw - name changed for another thread).

We used two arc2s in a compartment that normally takes a double inflatable, and there was room for the DCs to walk inbetween them and space at the end for bags etc.

We've also used ours loads in normal overnight stays elsewhere. Love them (although the poles stick out quite a long way beyond the mattress size, which would mean they probably shouldn't be put on top of an inflatable mattress...

Thanks for all the replies so far...sounds like the tent style ones are the way to go.

We haven't sorted our family tent yet (just have a small 2 man mountaineering tent whic is super cosy and which I will miss desperately!). Am going to trawl all previous threads on here for recommendations but will bear in mind that we will need space for the travel cot we get. I actually really hope that co-sleeping works when camping, would be so much easier.

The Kampa beds look fab too - there is so much kit for me to get my head (and my credit card) around now we will be camping en famille!

The first year we went camping with DD we had the samsonite bubble pop-up travel cot but gave it up (sold on ebay) when she started rolling over and tipping it over. We then got a normal travel cot, although not a huge one, and that worked absolutely fine in our tent but we do have a very large tent. It went in one of the two bedroom pods and there was still plenty of space for our bags and pop-up laundry basket etc. She is now 2.4 and once we put her in a big bed at home we got a Kampa blow-up bed for trips away and for camping later this year. She loves the Kampa and often asks for her bouncy pink bed (bad mummy just says no and puts her in her normal bed of course ).

For tents, that is probably a whole other thread, but my recommendation on the basis of cost and practicality would be a Quechua Base Seconds 4.2 from Decathlon. We got ours last year as the big tent is a pain to pitch on short trips and we love it.

Thanks Wiggletastic. Yes, going to do my tent research and then possibly start a whole new thread! There seem to be plenty on here though so hopefully will find some good tips.

In case anyone is still reading, forgot to ask re the Nomad/arc2, did you do a practice night at home? I just think the structure is so different from a normal cot at home, I worry DS will feel unsettled by the change?

Another recommendation for the Arc 2 here. We put ours on top of an old foam type camping mattress. OH and I have thermarests.

We didn't bother with a home trial with either DS and they were both fine. The whole fact they are in a tent not a house etc means that everything was so different anyway from normal. Neither DS seemed phased by this, they loved the fact we were right there as soon as they woke up. We used to lie still pretending we hadn't noticed they were awake because as soon as they saw we were awake theres no going back to sleep!

We used a normal travel cot with DD as tent (and car) was big enough. Tried to go without for DS for reasons of space in the car. Tried just a Thermarest roll mat but was disastrous--he kept rolling off and then woke up absurdly early and crawled around the tent.
DH bought a LL Twin-Arc but we never used it--not sure why. Keep meaning to ebay it but yours if you want it!