First ever camping holiday booked - I am so bloody excited!

[MrsNouveauRichards]

It will be very Enid Blyton won't it

I am getting so excited about the whole thing, bit concerned that it may not be all I expect (or hope!) and that I will be unable to fit everything in the car, but who cares? I have read the camping threads, I have taken notes - what could possibly go wrong? :o

Yay! You'll have a great time

My top tips:

Keep all the inner sleeping compartments closed in the daytime to keep insects out.

We have a footprint groundsheet which goes under our tent so that when you fold the tent up afterwards its not all covered in mud.

Take frozen bottles of water in the coolbox to keep your food fresh and give you cool water to drink as it melts.

Oh and we keep a loo-bucket in the entrance porch of our tent to save any midnight wanders to the toilet block TMI alert, between us we generally fill it up

I have a list of camping must haves:

Tent - check
Airbeds and sleeping bags - check
BBQ and gas stove - check
Loo bucket with bag and cat litter
Clothes airer
Millions of plastic bags
Alcohol
Scrabble
Torches/lights - check
New books of the trashy variety
Fleece blankets
Fire bucket
Vaccum bags for pillows and bedding

Anything else?

Oh, and child tranquilizers :o

Table and chairs (unless you are going to sit on a picnic rug - wouldn't suit me though).

Have chairs but no table.

The thing that spoiled our first camping trip was I didn't realise just how cold it got at night (in April duh me!!) it was a lovely hot weekend but we just turned up with (cheapish) sleeping bags. Now we take duvets and an extra layer to sleep in, I wear short sleeve pjs and an old jumper, we sleep on airbeds with the sleeping bag under us, as a sheet and this insulates from the cold air in the beds. Even in august it gets cold at night. The other thing that wasn't too good was the campsite was quite a lively one, with a group singing and playing music until very late, I now know to look on ukcampsite.co.uk for their valuable reviews. But that was 2 years ago and we still love camping. Nothing is better than eating and drinking outside, IMO.

We have a table, but use it to stand the cooker on, we eat with plates on our laps.

And the car is jammed full of essential stuff, we have a roof box too, my hubby is umming and ahhing over a trailer. Camping is fabulous fun, I raid poundland for bats and balls and outside toys for my girls.

If it's not being too much of a party pooper, can I flag up this thread if you've not already seen it.

On the subject of loo buckets with lids (we use an old nappy bucket) cheap disposable nappies or maternity mats also do a good soak up job.

Already posted. But thanks for flagging it up :)

Sorry, hadn't connected the brain cells up .