The Glass of Wine, The Campfire and The Awfully Big Adventure

[notwavingjustironing]

We've all blethered on pleasantly on Seashells' lovely previous thread and, with the school holidays approaching, lots of us are about to start our summer adventures( not all of which are in tents....!) This thread is for us all to check back in and generally keep in touch. So we've packed up our Icey-Teks and our Tarps and our Death Socks, gently doused the burning embers of our planning campfire and rinsed out the wine glasses.

We're ready for our Awfully Big Adventure.

Come and talk about yours here (even if you're staying put!)

Hello. We have just returned from a fab holiday where apparently our accommodation was a "Tent"! Take a look here as my Khyam has now gone down a lot in the "nicest tent" rankings

That takes glamping to a whole new league Milliways!!!!

The visiting elephants & giraffes were what really made it though!

For those talking about clever ways with one saucepan check out this recent thread

I just got another email in Dutch. Google Translate says "The products are sent to you. The sequence information is given below." and dated sent today. I'm now kicking myself that I didn't save a hundred quid and play Canvas Roulette when we bought the bell. But I didn't know it might work then.

YellowDinosaur (my son would like that username!) - DS1 used not to like bread, and then I started making my own in a fit of Little House on the Prariedom, and he loved that. I've long since stopped making our daily bread (tis really time-consuming and requires action at specific points, and my life is no longer that ordered since DS2 came along) but I buy 'hand-hewn' bread from the shops and pretend I made it, and he's fine with that.

I'd love a brazier or a firepit or something, but have decided to retain the shreds of my sanity and stop buying camping stuff before we've actually used the tent in anger, as it were. We still haven't slept out in it. Besides, it wouldn't fit in the car, and I think I need to rack up a few really fab camping weekends this summer before convincing DH that what we need is a brazier/firepit, and therefore also a trailer/roofbox.

My children mostly didn't like food mixed up, for years I would just give them the separate ingredients in little piles on the plates. But there is hope, these days I can get all 3 eating mixed up spicy food, curries etc, on a good day, that would have been impossible a couple of years ago.

Pasta pesto and salad is one of our camping staples. Eggy bread most mornings. Rice and stir fry. Veg sausages, eggs and beans. Crepes if in France. We don't get much more adventurous than that. These days with 5 of us and the girls eating more than they used to the problem is getting bigger saucepans onto small camping stoves.

Thanks for link to camping cooking thread, btw.

Wow, Milliways! That's incredible! So beautiful. Makes me think of these lovely things.

Reshape yippee on the canvas roulette!! Liking your style on passing bread off as home cooked too . I'm working on getting a roof box too so that I can buy more lovely camping stuff be more organised and not have to sit with my legs folded up on top of boxes!

Fennel glad to hear there is hope on he mixed up food front. Although dh is a separate food person wierdo too so who knows if there is any hope for the boys!

Haven't posted on here before but have been shyly lurking since the other thread

Just wanted to say that the steel drum inside a washing machine makes a fab firepit and you can cook really well on
It too.

It's a pain to pack unless you have a trailer & fill it up with the BBQ gubbins.

Now that's an interesting suggestion nekkid as I have a washing machine rusting in my garage

Canvas roulette is doing well-hmmm I need to get involved!

I can really relate to being a smug mother of 2 BLW babies, who ate everything at 1 year old but threw everything at the wall
In disgust by 18mths I also bf for 12months and they both have excema... Oh well, at least I had a few months feeling like an smug earth mother even though it's all gone to pot!!

Next weekend is visitor free and I'm being to think about sneaking a trip. Dh will kill me, he is so busy I think he couldn't compute a camping trip!

I like the washing machine drum idea. Very post-industrial chic. Can't imagine being able to get it in the car, though! DH v sniffy about the suggestion that we eventually get a trailer. Fair enough, because I'm far too wimpy to drive a car with a trailer myself.

Before I forget-any of you serious about the bh camp? If I'm free on my rota we are thinking of going despite it being a slightly strange concept of meeting you in person iyswim. I never ever thought I'd be up for going on a meet up and crossing the mn/RL barrier!!

Reshape-you have my sympathy, we have a roof box but I think we will need a trailer too (and bikes on the back-we will look lime hillbillies!)

SeaShells, yes, we're definitely going. Not sure if that's more of a deterrent than selling point, though... With you on slightly strange set-up of meeting people in real life, but I'm really looking forward to it. Based on the following, I'm hopeful that you're not all nutcases that we'd get on well:

Met people from my postnatal thread in real life, and they were all lovely. I think it helped that by that stage we'd chatted enough to know whether we would get on, which applies here.

However, I went to some product test day once, and it was a little weird, some people were strange. I'd never go to something like that again.

Oh, and for what it's worth, dh is so not a "ooh, we're one big happy family with these new people I've never met, let's go on holiday together"-kind of person, your dh will be safe.

Uhm sorry, just realised how horrible that sounded re the "some people" part... Meant that being locked into one room for hours with someone you've got nothing to say to was rather odd. Different in the camping set-up where you've got your privacy in the tent and have family around. Failing that, it's after dark, so wine helps.

I'm liking the washing machine drum idea too except I'm thinking it would be cheaper and easier to convince dh on the benefits of a firepit than a new washing machine!!!

I'd love to come to the BH camp. I too have met some of the ladies from my postnatal thread and had a great time. However its just too far - I live in Newcastle. Dh and I both have family who live miles away so we have more than enough slugs to the opposite end of the country and he's another who would not particularly welcome meeting up with a load of strangers in that sort of set up. I'd be up for it if there was something a bit closer to home (I can work on dh!) though...

Yep you're right MissSal wine def helps! Plus the fact that we all have some common ground with camping even if we all have different ideas about what works! I would imagine in your product test thingy there were all sorts of people about who you haven't necessarily got anything in common with

The whole trailer thing is a very slippy slope to more & more camping gear. We got one 2 years ago but had to buy an extra high side kit for it this year

I would love to go on the bh camp but we are taking our tent to France fro the first time for the last 2 weeks in august.

Ds goes on his first cub camp trip this Sunday. Am quite at him getting an extra camping trip in.

Yellow, you could try and sell the washing machine drum idea to dh. By the time you casually mention firepit he'd be so relieved he'd jump at the idea.

I'm liking your style MissSal! A bit like the big metal chicken

We probably need a trailer already Nikki - we have a Vauxhall Zafira but despite that still have things stuffed in the foot wells and between the boys on the back seat!!! I think I am in denial that the fact we now have sleeping bags rather than several duvets will make space for all the essentials I have bought this year!!!

hahah Yellow.

I also converted space saved by getting some v lightweight down sleeping bags into 5 cubic metres of spare space in the car for other stuff

Could somone please come round here and wrestle my credit card off me. I accidentally just went on the craghoppers site where the sale seems to be in progress with TREMENDOUS reductions and, employing orange's canvas roulette technique, had a go at buying a death shirt each for dh and me, and a death buff (buff not muff) for myself. BIZARRELY it seems to have worked.

gawd

i did return the solar charger yesterday so that makes up for it. doesn't it?

We have a Zafira too, with 3 kids, 5 bikes and a kayak and several windsurfers, usually. Plus 5 lots of wetsuits and lifejackets. You can see why we don't get tempted by camping fridges etc.

But how are we going to manage the Scillies camping trip without a car? We get 20kg luggage each, and only 2 bags each. ????

I have often backpacked with lightweight camping gear, and we do that with the dc but only for a night or so. Want to take a proper tent and stove etc for a 10 day holiday.

Blimey Fennel.

That is quite some challenge.

How good at carrying are the dc. Will you be able to load them up like pack horses?

They are quite good, and there are tractors and trailers I think, you don't have to carry stuff far. 11yo dd1 is tiny but very strong, she will carry loads. But all the saucepans and cooking stuff and my many books, and the beach clutter?

God beach clutter is a nightmare. Just a spade each maybe? Saucepans equally tiresome. I just have two now. One big one small.

have you had a book cull from your 12 for 10 days ?