Camping with no refrigeration on site

[FlamingoBingo]

Is there any point in taking a cool box? Will it still keep things cool-ish if it's in the shade even if it has no ice blocks in?

How long for?
If you take it with some frozen blocks in, freeze as much of the contents as possible (e.g freeze bottle of milk) and don't open the lid more often than necessary or leave it open, it should stay cool over a weekend.

Longer if you have an Icey Tek.

And you can buy bags of ice oin supermarkets for £1 so could stock up if you are out and about.

I also pre-cool the cool box before I go by emptying the contents of the freezer into it for a while so it's cold before I pack it with frozen milk, orange juice, all meat and anything else that can be frozen that we'll be using.

Then keep in the shade (pref with some breeze) with a wet cloth over it to help keep it cool - it really helps.

Then as Blu says, add bags of ice from the supermarket as you need it.

Another tip if you drink white wine - buy a wine box and take the 'bladder' out and put it directly in the cool box so it's in contact with more of the cold stuff. We've found it keeps cold longer..... very important!! And - if you take a screw cap wine bottle for the first night you can just refill it from the cold wine 'bladder' so you don't have to keep opening the cool box which lets the heat in!

Hope that helps.

Most campsites have a freezer somewhere to re freeze blocks.

This one doesn't, imnotmymum, hence the question.

Thank you blu and Fridaysmum, will try those tips. Don't drink wine so that's not an issue, it's more fruit and veg and milk that we want to keep cool, oh and eggs - can't camp without eggs!

Check my thread in here too, there's more suggestions there too, as have same problem

Eggs don't need to be in the cool box - but do get an egg carrier - we got ours in the £ shop and it's great.

We didn't have one until our 2nd camping trip .... as on our first camping trip we took the eggs in their box, in the cool box and they got crushed.

I'd definitely frreze some 1 pint milk cartons and take one of the 'fresher for longer' milks with me.

I've also found that a couple of frozen bottles of water work better than freezer blocks too - more frozen volume, and can be drunk once defrosted so no wasted space really either!

What's your thread called, Lisa?

Great ideas, Fridays mum! Thank you.