Camping costs...

[pitchy]

Hi, we're total camping virgins, but would really like to start. How much do you think you need to layout for a basic camp? We are a family of 4. 2 parents and two dc aged 3&1. Also, what kit do you need to start? I'm thinking, tent, sleeping bags, air beds, stove, table, chairs, torches. Thank.

before you shell out £££ on kit, can you borrow some for a trial run? you may hate it in which case you haven't lost any money. And if you love it then you can justify buying some quality kit rather than buying cheap just in case you only use it once... we get almost all our stuff from Go Outdoors - they have all the tents set up outside so you can get a good idea of how much space each one offers.

Also, I recommend checking out Gumtree / Ebay where people are selling their entire collection, as they hated it / never used it etc

We've kitted ourselves out from scratch in the last year with a decent tent (bought on 2nd hand on ebay), cooking stuff, sleeping stuff including decent sleeping bags (bought cheap ones initially and froze!), electric cool box etc and I reckon spread over the last year we have probably spent around £500. I know that sounds a lot but as we tend to do week long camps as well as a couple of weekends it seemed a good investment, we've paid that for a week in a cottage before!

Hope it helps! Would second the recommendations of looking on ebay and gumtree as you can save a fortune that way, you can always top up with newer bits once you've decided that you like it!

Good luck and enjoy!

That's great. Thanks for the tips. Didn't think of looking on gumtree.