Icey tek- need one of those freezy mat things?

[glitterkitty]

Help- just about to spend £££ and dont know whether I need an ice mat thing (cant remember technical term) or can use party bag of ice- only getting smallest one so does it help to save space?

Thanks!

Nope don't need gel mat things. Bag of ice/standard ice blocks work fine.

You do know you can't stand a bottle of wine up in the smallest one. This was a major consideration for us . 40l one is the smallest one for a wine bottle.

Works brilliantly though if you stack it full of frozen food, and frozen milk before you go. We still had ice seven days on.

Thanks! Have ordered 25L one and will just use ice (v useful for g&t anyway).

Thanks for tip about wine bottle- guess I'll just have to stick to red...

Can't you just take wine with screw tops and lay them down?

Mollie

As we are travelling through some of the finest white wine growing regions along the Rhine this year I simply could not risk not being able to chill booze with old fashion corks.

Glitter, you won't regret buying one. The are A Ma Zing. Our friends who we camped with last week phoned up the company and bought one while we were still at the site.

What colour are you going for?

I wanted yellow, but heard yellow was fly magnet? Have gone for... white. We are (fairly) functional campers. No glitzy tea light chandeliers or sparkly rugs here. No bell tents. No fairy lights. All is khaki.

Am v excited about it actually- we have only had a crappy coolbag up till now- just think- solid butter! Milk overnight! And wiiiiine (if screw capped and laid in appropriate manner)

White very functional and sensible. We are also functional campers so went for um orange

It was beyond exciting to drink really really cold wine, and not just on the first night, oh no, five days in. cold wine! [easily pleased]

You can get a khaki icey tek!

Dont. DP would definatly want the khaki. Am pleased I have ordered the white one. I envy you your orange one- is it MASSIVE?

Off to Aldi on Thurs to look at their camping gear, love buying camping stuff, it feels so practical somehow... like your not spending money frivolously, your being organised and useful and prepared.

Off to source wine making equipment now.

It is massive glitter. Stupidly massive really. A giant square of orange that fills up an outrageously large amount of our already stuffed to the gunnels boot. But camping kit is all compromise isn't it, and now I have cold food, and can take lots of it rather than having to shop everyday and endlessly swap ice blocks.

I heartily concur re buying camping stuff.
High heels, handbags, £30 face cream = big waste of money
Micro fibre towels, gas lanterns, an ickle set of saucepans that all fit inside each other = a practical investment

Aldi buys are great. I enjoyed their polar fleece blankets A LOT last week.

Are you going to make wine in your tent?
[impressed at thriftiness]

Slubber, yy, my friend bought a £300 handbag and all I could think was 'I could buy a really nice tent for that'.

Oh god....

I honestly dont look like a weathered old sailor.

at tent wine making! that would be impressive!

Noooo... we have an enormous elder tree in the garden, and wastage of the millions of berries when apparently they can be easily transformed into useful alcohol gets to me every year.

This year I'm getting them before the pigeons do.

I am just the same (tent price comparisons not looking like an old sailor)

haha love the phrase useful alcohol.

So will that be for drinking or for burning in your Coleman multi fuel stove?

I hope to drink it- ! Just think- free alcohol made from my own tree product! That would surely get me through the frreezing nights and perhaps the crushed skins would make a lovely face mask.

Trangia here, are we going to talk kit?

You got a cobb yet?

I think we should have tickers like UK Campsite

Glitterkitty: July 2011: Dorset coast forest; August Eweleaze; Giant megatent with poncy coolbox; please dont rearrange my boxes I WILL FIND IT; elderberry wine; YY bucket/ bonfire NN i dont want to go to the clubhouse

I've had a Cobb for a few years now. love it Love it.

I was just on the trangia site yesterday having a peruse. Never owned one which is rather shaming on the camping kit front.

Slubber: June/ July random weekends mostly in N Wales. Aug/Sept epic 6 weeks in Germany & Austria. Small but perfectly formed canvas pyramid. yy: delta pegs. No way hosé: bunting.

Not typing all that out again. My first and last ticker

Trangias are fab! We don't go in for much camp cooking (which is an excuse just to eat chips out of the paper a lot) so just use it boiling a kettle, frying sausages, heating beans, soup or chilli and cooking boil-in-the-bag rice.

I've also got a Trangia bottle for the meths and it makes filling the burner so much easier when you're bleary eyed in the morning . (Top tip, just put the bottom of your mug over the burner to extinguish the flame rather than faff with trying to close the burner when it's hot).

We've also got to fit 2 adults, 2 children in car seats and all the gear into a tardis Ford Focus, so no room for a Cobb/gas stove here.

Funtimewincies: Just back from Conwy, planning trip to Shropshire. Wynnster Faro 5 with feral 4 year old and escape artist 18 month old. Yes: proper mugs, no: decorations

Trangias look so cool, and very un-tipoverable. The very fit and taut young man in Cotswold camping enthused about them at length for me a few months back. Then he moved on to primus stoves and jet boils and cooking at altitude and the choice was all too much so I had to leave.

I'm feeling guilt about people doing camping tickers now. A bit.

Funtime, we have a focus too- and DP goes purple when I try and sneak in stuff. So Cobb probably out at moment. One day though yy to proper mugs.

Slubber- bunting is indeed wrong. What say ye to camping furniture?

Depends.

Inflatable sofas - no
Wardrobes and collapsible shelving units to display your fleeces a la Benetton - no
Any sort of occasional table with a throw draped over it and then a lamp - no
Those moon chairs - no

God I'm a miserable fucker

Table, yeah why not
chairs sensible chairs yup, no problem with chairs

You lot are dangerous! I decided to splash out on a 2-way cool box last year as our trusty cool bag had ripped after many years of use. It was useless, really noisy when plugged in, even over the engine noise and it just didn't keep things cool like our cool bag did.

So this year I'm begrudgingly looking for a better one. I'm soooo tempted, but it's practical the price of a weekend camping!

Trangias remind me of DofE, and they scared me then. We've got a 2 hob gas stove, very practical, but not very swish. DH is the cook, but he's not interested in camping kit (annoyingly).

bilblio: June/July/August random weekends within a couple of hours of Manchester while I have 4 day weekends and before bump gets too big; Highly practical Outwell Nevada L, YY: Dozer mats and crocheted blankets. NN: Holiday Parks

I am warming to the tickers.

biblio I rationalise everything with cost per use. So icey tek price weighed up against no ehu fees + no wasted thrown out manky food X many weeks/weekends of camping over hopefully many years. This thing will last and last, you'd have to drag it behind a land rover and then throw it off a cliff and then set fire to it to break it.

It's a bobby bargain when you look at it like that.

I like the tickers, it's helping me remember what kind of campers people are and therefore how much I should rate their opinion :o

I'm being persuaded Slubber, we never do ehu so that isn't an issue,

• but DH sees camping as a way of travelling round farm shops looking for interesting things, with a decent cool box we'd be able to buy more and freeze it when we got home :)

• However I'm very aware that this bump may mean no camping trips for a couple of years. I'd be happy to go, but DH is definitely a fair weather camper.

+ DD loves camping though so I may just buy a smaller tent for the 2 of us and leave DH and the baby at home. :o + And a good cool box would be very handy for days out.... + And I could end up buying another proper cool box which is just as useless...